Non posso abbandonarmi a voli di fantasia perché ciò è contrario alla mia natura.
Quoted in "Badoglio Risponde" - Page 225 - by Vanna Vailati - Italy - 1958
Non posso abbandonarmi a voli di fantasia perché ciò è contrario alla mia natura.
“In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.”
A comment recalled by János Plesch in János, the Story of a Doctor (1947), p. 207. Also quoted in Einstein: the Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 118 http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1940s
Variant: "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge." From The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 26 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false. This book attributes it to Einstein and the Humanities (1979) by Dennis Ryan, p. 125, but Calaprice seems to have copied it wrong, since searching "inside the book" on this book's amazon page http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Humanities-Contributions-Dennis-Ryan/dp/0313253803 using the word "gift" shows that p. 125 actually gives the same quote as in János, the Story of a Doctor.
Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 51, note 63
“Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there”
“My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big challenge.”
Guardian interview, Stephen Moss Monday March 14, 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1436951,00.html
2000s
Je veux qu'on me voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins...Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre.
Book I (1580), To the Reader
Essais (1595), Book I
A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 10, p. 77
Confessions (c. 397)
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 153.
Context: My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.
