We All Try To Escape Pain And

I Am Exclusively Occupied With The Problem Of Gravitation And Hope With The Help Of A Local Mathematician Friend [marcel Grossman] To Overcome All The Difficulties. One Thing Is Certain, However, That Never In Life Have I Been Quite So Tormented. A Great Respect For Mathematics Has Been Instilled Within Me, The Subtler Aspects Of Which, In My Stupidity, I Regarded Until Now As Pure Luxury.

An Attempt At Visualizing The Fourth Dimension: Take A Point, Stretch It Into A Line, Curl It Into A Circle, Twist It Into A Sphere, And Punch Through The Sphere.

One Had To Cram All This Stuff Into One's Mind For The Examinations, Whether One Liked It Or Not. This Coercion Had Such A Deterring Effect On Me That, After I Had Passed The Final Examination, I Found The Consideration Of Any Scientific Problems Distasteful To Me For An Entire Year.

This Is What The Painter, The Poet, The Speculative Philosopher, And The Natural Scientists Do, Each In His Own Fashion.

I Prefer An Attitude Of Humility Corresponding To The Weakness Of Our Intellectual Understanding Of Nature And Of Our Own Being.