Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

But I know now there’s one thing you’ve all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” I said. “Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I’ve discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

A policeman took me home. I have the strange feeling that this has all happened to me before—a long time ago.

Please . . . please . . . dont let me forget how to reed and rite . . .

P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.