My interest in science was always essentially limited to the study of principles.... That I have published so little is due to this same circumstance, as the great need to grasp principles has caused me to spend most of my time on fruitless pursuits.
Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops.
For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown
I don't speak anything very well. The longer that you travel, you find out that you really don't even need to speak the language to get around and get things done, to live in those places. If you're somewhat resourceful and perceptive, you're pretty much going to know what's going on because human nature is human nature: they understand it, you understand it, and it works.
They say I need to be seasoned; they say I need to be stewed. They say, 'We need to boil all the hope out of him -- like us -- and then he'll be ready.'
We are caught up in a paradox, one which might be called the paradox of conceptualization. The proper concepts are needed to formulate a good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts.