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This Week Magazine, October 14, 1956

Words to Live By

Don't Get Too Comfortable

A beloved American writer gives some good advice in poetic form

Pulitzer-Prize Winner: Now 78, Carl Sandburg has been a newspaperman, distinguished poet, Lincoln biographer, folklore collector

Don't Get Too Comfortable

Albert Einstein, the relativity man, was a
          pioneer and wayshower.
He changed the structure of the universe as
          an idea or a concept.
It made a sensation in the history of science
          that hasn't yet slowed down.
When he was asked why his theory and its
          proof brought the excitement it did, he
          answered, “I challenged an axiom”.
He was one of a series of pioneers each of
          whom challenged an axiom.
You didn't have to prove it.
An axiom is a principle or theory so plain to
          be seen that it doesn't need proof.
Much of the history of the world could be
          written in a book to be titled,
          “Challengers
          Of Axioms.”
They were not afraid of hard work and plain
          living.
There has been a slogan that “plain living and
          high thinking" go together.
Einstein confessed, “To make a goal of com-
          fort or happiness has never appealed to me.”
          Some people take it that Einstein in essence
          was saying. “I prefer misery to comfort and
          I'd rather have trouble than happiness.”
Of course he meant no such thing.
Is there a game of words here?
Could it be there are men who get comfort by
          going without comforts?
Another little book could be written about
          how Einstein meant it that “comfort and
happiness" are dangerous goals.

Anyhow, we heard Rocky Marciano tell Ed
          Murrow that since he retired from the ring,
          quit being world champion, he had gained
          20 pounds.
And of the years when he fought 49 fights and
          never lost one, he said, “I was always
          hungry, always hungry.”
So it seems that Einstein and Marciano had
          each his own way of guarding against the
          dangers of “comfort and happiness.”

Words to Live by, Don't Get Too Comfortable, This Week Magazine, October 14, 1956, Page 2 — The Washington Evening Star,

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