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About this quote

What does it mean?
He feels torn between caring deeply for society and needing solitude from direct social contact.
In plain terms
He cares for society but prefers avoiding constant human contact.
What can you take from it?
You can care for people without constant contact.

Where it applies

  • activism
  • work life balance
  • personal reflection

Putting it to work

  • balance solitude and service
  • respect boundaries

Questions to consider

  • How do you balance giving and withdrawing?
  • Does service require contact?

Another view

It may excuse isolation that harms community connection.

More from Albert Einstein

  1. I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and …

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  2. I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties …

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  3. In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner …

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