“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 time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully,
have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of
like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally
unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have
seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward
success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.”
—
Albert Einstein,
The World As I See
It