How strange is the lot of us mortals!  Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.  But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people first of all for those upon whose smiles our own happiness and well-being is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.  A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.  I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labor of my fellow men.  I regard class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force.  I also believe that a simple and unassuming life is good for everybody, both physically and mentally.

Schopenhauer’s saying , “A man can do what he wants , but not want what he wants .” has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth ;it has been a continual consolation in the face of  life’s hardships , my own and others ,and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance . This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people all too seriously ; it is conducive to a view of life which , in particular , gives humor its due.

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense.  Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.  Schopen-hauer's saying, "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants," has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life's hardships, my own and others', and an unfailing well-spring of tolerance.  This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in particular, gives humor its due.

To inquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or that of all creatures has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view.  And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and judgements.  In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves.  The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.  Without a sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed to me empty.  The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always oddly contrasted with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.  I am truly a "lone traveler" and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need of solitude -- feelings which increase with the years.  One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, of the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people.  No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgements of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations.

My political ideal is democracy.  Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized...  The really valuable thing in the pageant of life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

This topic brings me to that worst crop of herd life, the military system which I abhor.  That a man can take pleasure in marching in fours to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed.  This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed.  Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!  How vile and despicable seems war to me!  I would rather be hacked in pieces that take part in such an abominable business.  My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have been disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the media.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.  Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.  It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion.  A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds -- it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.  I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves.  Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual who survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts.  I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.