“The dream, scrutinized by scientists in various experiments, has been found to be an absolute necessity to man.”

The Value of Science (1955)
Context: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Notes on the Banner of Peace (24 May 1939)
Context: I was asked to collect information where the symbols of our Banner of Peace could be found. It turned out that the symbol of the Holy Trinity has been scattered all over the world. This has been explained in various ways. Some say it means the past, present and future, bound by the ring of eternity. Others find it more palatable to explain it as religion, knowledge and art in the ring of Culture. Obviously there were various explanations already in the ancient times, but the symbol, the sign itself had become fixed all over the world. … You can find it on the ancient icon in Bar depicting St. Nicholas. The same is on the centuries-old image of St. Sergius. It is on the image of Holy Trinity. It is on the coat of arms of Samarkand. It is on ancient Ethiopian and Coptic antiquities. It is on Mongolian rocks. It is on Tibetan rings. The steed of happiness on the Himalayan Mountains passes bears the same flaming sign. It is on all the brooches of Lahuli, Ladakhi and Himalayan Mountains. It is on Buddhist banners. Going back to the Neolithic depths we can find the same sign in the ornaments decorating their pottery. … And that is why the symbol was chose for all uniting Banner as the symbol that has passed through centuries, more exactly — millennia. The symbol was not a mere decorating ornament all over, it bore a very special meaning. Collecting all its images together, we might prove that it is the most extensively spread and ancient one among all the symbols of mankind. No one can claim that it belongs but to one religion or is based on the only one folk-lore. It would be very beneficial to glance at the evolution of human consciousness in its variegated forms.

Quote in Vincent's letter to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 3 June 1883; as cited in Stranger on the Earth : A Psychological Biography of Vincent Van Gogh (1996) by Albert J. Lubin, p. 22
Variant translation: For me, the work is an absolute necessity. I cannot put it off; I don't care for anything else; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once, and I become melancholy when I cannot go on with my work. I feel then as the weaver does when he sees that his threads have got tangled, the pattern he had on the loom has gone to the deuce, and his exertion and deliberation are lost.
As quoted in Dear Theo: the Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh (1995) edited by Irving Stone and Jean Stone, p. 204
1880s, 1883
Context: The work is an absolute necessity for me. I can't put it off, I don't care for anything but the work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy when I can't go on with my work. Then I feel like a weaver who sees that his threads are tangled, and the pattern he had on the loom is gone to hell, and all his thought and exertion is lost.

Source: Time Tunnel (1964), Chapter 2 (p. 19).

The Micallef P(r)ogram(me)

As quoted in Pastoral Care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Healing the Shattered Soul (2002) by Dalene Fuller Rogers and Harold G. Koenig, p. 31

Source: On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960), Ch. 1 : Religious Authority and Mysticism
Context: We shall start from the assumption that a mystic, insofar as he participates actively in the religious life of a community, does not act in the void. It is sometimes said, to be sure, that mystics, with their personal striving for transcendence, live outside of and above the historical level, that their experience is unrelated to historical experience. Some admire this ahistorical orientation, others condemn it as a fundamental weakness of mys­ticism. Be that as it may, what is of interest to the history of reli­gions is the mystic's impact on the historical world, his conflict with the religious life of his day and with his community. No his­torian can say — nor is it his business to answer such questions­ whether a given mystic in the course of his individual religious experience actually found what he was so eagerly looking for. What concerns us here is not the mystic's inner fulfillment. But if we wish to understand the specific tension that often prevailed between mysticism and religious authority, we shall do well to recall certain basic facts concerning mysticism.
A mystic is a man who has been favored with an immediate, and to him real, experience of the divine, of ultimate reality, or who at least strives to attain such experience. His experience may come to him through sudden illumination, or it may be the result of long and often elaborate preparations. From a historical point of view, the mystical quest for the divine takes place almost exclusively wit a prescribed tradition-the exceptions seem to be limited to modern times, with their dissolution of all traditional ties. Where such a tradition prevails, a religious authority, established long before the mystic was born, has been recognized by the com­ munity for many generations.

Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 16