“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

“I have my periods of restlessness. When my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips. When I am excited and cannot stop for anybody. Let me alone. Let me work as I like even if I have to sit up all night, or even for two nights. When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged, put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep, and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake. Then I may hang around, read novels, and be stupid without an idea in my head and so I get rested and ready for another period of work. But ohh, do not do as you often do- stop me in the midst of my work, my excitement with-

“Alex, Alex, aren't you coming to bed? It's 1:00am, do you come!”

Then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my eyes and after a while I go to sleep. But the ideas are gone. The work is never done.”

“Spontaneously and unpredictably individuals arise here and there in the world, here and there in time, who introduced great clarifications, new words, new languages and fresh statements which cause the rate of scientific progress to jump ahead by 10, 20, or 100 years. We accept these men by paying tribute to their names. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein. But then we fail to learn the lesson that their names teach. Just as the great steps in scientific history are taken by the giants of the centuries, where they sloth off the tentacles of the group mind so every significant step in each lesser field, in each single field, is taken by some individual who has freed himself from a way of thinking that is held by his friends and associates who may be more intelligent, better educated, better disciplined, but who have not mastered the art of the fresh clean look at the old old knowledge.”