The Future Of Humanity Is Uncertain, Even

For Me Chemistry Represented An Indefinite Cloud Of Future Potentialities Which Enveloped My Life To Come In Black Volutes Torn By Fiery Flashes, Like Those Which Had Hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, From That Cloud I Expected My Law, The Principle Of Order In Me, Around Me, And In The World... I Would Watch The Buds Swell In Spring, The Mica Glint In The Granite, My Own Hands, And I Would Say To Myself: "i Will Understand This, Too, I Will Understand Everything.

To Give A Name To A Thing Is As Gratifying As Giving A Name To An Island, But It Is Also Dangerous: The Danger Consists In One's Becoming Convinced That All Is Taken Care Of And That Once Named, The Phenomenon Has Also Been Explained.

To Accuse Another Of Having Weak Kidneys, Lungs, Or Heart, Is Not A Crime; On The Contrary, Saying He Has A Weak Brain Is A Crime.

Perhaps One Cannot, What Is More One Must Not, Understand What Happened, Because To Understand [the Holocaust] Is Almost To Justify...no Normal Human Being Will Ever Be Able To Identify With Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, And Endless Others. This Dismays Us, And At The Same Time Gives Us A Sense Of Relief, Because Perhaps It Is Desirable That Their Words (and Also, Unfortunately, Their Deeds) Cannot Be Comprehensible To Us. They Are Non-human Words And Deeds, Really Counter-human.

I Live In My House As I Live Inside My Skin: I Know More Beautiful, More Ample, More Sturdy And More Picturesque Skins: But It Would Seem To Me Unnatural To Exchange Them For Mine.