Albert Einstein — The World As I See It (1931)

“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler,’ and have never belonged wholeheartedly to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude — feelings which increase with the years.

Such a person loses some of his naïveté and lightheartedness, but on the other hand he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations.

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense.Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.”

— Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1931)