Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

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.

So this is how a person can come to despise himself—knowing he’s doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.

I’m like an animal who’s been locked out of his nice, safe cage.”

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.

A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

“There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.

intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.”

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

I passed your floor on the way up, and now I’m passing it on the way down, and I don’t think I’ll be taking this elevator again.