"Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become"
About this Quote
The biblical cadence of "six years... the seventh" echoes Sabbath logic, but he repurposes rest into recalibration. Solitude isn't romantic; it's strategic. "Among strangers" is the sharper option: anonymity as an experimental condition. With strangers, you don't have to defend your evolution, narrate your choices, or perform continuity. You can simply be the new result.
Szilard's context matters. A Hungarian Jewish physicist who moved across borders and disciplines, he lived through the collapse of old worlds and helped birth a terrifying new one, pushing the chain reaction idea and later warning about nuclear catastrophe. For an exile and a builder of unprecedented futures, the past isn't quaint; it's dangerous. The subtext is both psychological and political: to become what history demands, you may need distance from the people who love you for what you used to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reinvention |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence: Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not prevent you from being what you have become. (opening pages; commandment 9). The strongest primary-source trail I found is that this saying is commandment 9 of Leo Szilard's unpublished German 'Ten Commandments.' A secondary but source-focused PDF states Szilard wrote them down in German around fall 1940, did not publish them in his lifetime, and that Jacob Bronowski later translated them into English after Szilard's death in 1964; that English translation and the original German were then published in the opening pages of the 1978 MIT Press volume edited by Spencer R. Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard. This means the quote is authentically Szilard's, but the first identifiable publication I could verify is the 1978 book, not a contemporaneous 1940 publication. I could not directly verify the exact printed page number from a scan of the 1978 book itself, only that it appears in the opening pages and is commonly described as part of 'Szilard's Ten Commandments.' The wording often circulates online with 'does not hinder you' or 'recollection of your friends does not hinder you'; the verifiable wording from the source trail I found is 'does not prevent you.' Other candidates (1) Dialogues on Perception (Bela Julesz, 1995) compilation98.0% ... Do your work for six years ; but in the seventh , go into solitude or among strangers so that the memory of your ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Szilard, Leo. (2026, March 13). Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/do-your-work-for-six-years-but-in-the-seventh-go-134002/
Chicago Style
Szilard, Leo. "Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become." FixQuotes. March 13, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/do-your-work-for-six-years-but-in-the-seventh-go-134002/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become." FixQuotes, 13 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/do-your-work-for-six-years-but-in-the-seventh-go-134002/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2026.
