21 quotes
There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem — they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
You can't have everything you want in one woman.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
We learn what something is not — and that is as important as a positive discovery to the man who is going to pick up from there. At least he knows what not to do.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
So many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
You don't know what it's like to have something happening inside you, that you can't see and can't control, and know it's all slipping through your fingers.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
No one really starts anything new, Mrs Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
My most absorbing interests at the present time are etymologies of ancient languages, the newer works on the calculus of variations, and Hindu history. It's amazing the way things, apparently disconnected, hang together.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
The meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my past, where I'm going as well as where I've been.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
I've got to grow up. For me it means everything...
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
The answer can't be found in books — or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you — feel the right thing to do.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
I am not only a thing, but also a way of being — one of many ways — and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.
Flowers for Algernon (1966)