I could at times be overly emotional, but was lucky to have the kind of orderly mind that is good at categorizing things.

An organized mind leads effortlessly to good decision-making.

I was early regarded as having unusual intellectual capacity. I was an omnivorous reader, and I added to that a desire to systematize my understanding. As a result, history, for example, was not merely a set of dates and colorful stories; I could understand it as a sequence in which one event flowed out of another. This sense of order crystallized during my high-school and college years into a predominant interest in mathematics and mathematical logic.

The reason for this is, that what we call thought (1) is itself an orderly thing, and (2) can only be applied to material, i.e. to perceptions or experiences, which have a certain degree of orderliness.

But those who are able to distinguish between a range of various emotions “do much, much better at managing the ups and downs of ordinary existence than those who see everything in black and white.

If I had to give any credit to myself, I would say that I was a darn good organizer, and if I did it was because I read the works of the...I read quite a bit about the anarchists’ organization.

Those who have a well-ordered character lead also a well-ordered life.

I would say I'm good at organizing things, like trips or vacations. I'm always the one to book the flights, and do things like that. I like to do my research. I wouldn't say I'm a super type A personality, but I like to be organized when it comes to travel and vacation.

I remember feeling that if I don’t express this somehow, I’ll despair, I’ll go mad. Looking back, part of it was about trying to impose some kind of order in a process that was decidedly chaotic. Because of my profession, I tend to understand the world in words, in sequences of events. What I saw later was that I was trying to document as clearly as possible an emotional journey. And it felt important at the time that I remember it in its entirety and its complexity.

I guess I'm pretty emotional.

The first was never to accept anything as true that I did not plainly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid hasty judgment and prejudice; and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and so distinctly that I had no occasion to call it in doubt. The second, to divide each of the difficulties I would examine into as many parts as possible and as was required in order better to resolve them. The third, to conduct my thoughts in an orderly fashion, by commencing with those objects that are simplest and easiest to know, in order to ascend little by little, as by degrees, to the knowledge of the most composite things, and by supposing an order even among those things that do not [19] naturally precede one another. And the last, everywhere to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that I was assured of having omitted nothing.

mad, were not my perception and reasonings so clear; and this state of mind appears to have brought with it superior knowledge on all subjects.

The primary indication of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

If he was indeed mad, his delusions were beautifully organized.