Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

Smug, pompous—I felt like hitting him too. “I was a person before the operation. In case you forgot—” “Yes, of course, Charlie. Don’t misunderstand. But it was different . . . ” And then he remembered that he had to check some charts in the lab.

ashamed for both of us. How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.

intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.” I helped myself to another martini

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.