Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity such as I cannot derive from other realms. It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. It is the theory that decides what we can observe. Information is not knowledge. Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to destroy part or all of the planet… But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the growing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to ring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it. Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. | 
