| Author Quoted | Albert Einstein |
| Title Quoted | Ideas and Opinions |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1957/12/17 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1954 |
| Quotation | Here, however, is a paragraph which I can and ought to make my own: "My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveller' and have never belonged to my country, my house, my friends, or even my immediate family with my whole heart; in the face of these ties I have never lost a sense of distance and need for 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 judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptations to build his inner equilibrium on such insecure foundations." (Ideas and Opinions, p. 9) |
| Quotation Source | A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 146-47 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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