"It was inevitable that in doing this I should arrive at new results, and it is perhaps understandable that in the end I have felt impelled to present these results not only in the dry form of a catalogue, but also in a more connected and personal one"
About this Quote
Then comes the real pivot: the “dry form of a catalogue” versus “a more connected and personal one.” He’s staking out a middle path between archival authority and narrative persuasion. Catalogues imply objectivity, completeness, a kind of institutional tone. By admitting their dryness, he signals awareness of how scholarship can become a mausoleum: accurate, impressive, unread. The “connected and personal” alternative is not a retreat from rigor; it’s an argument that interpretation is part of the evidence. Connection is meaning-making, and “personal” is a claim about voice: the researcher as a visible witness, not an invisible clerk.
The phrase “felt impelled” is doing cultural work too. It casts authorship as compulsion rather than choice, a defense against accusations of subjectivity. He anticipates the gatekeepers who distrust the first person, and answers them with a paradox: the most responsible way to report facts is sometimes to admit the human path that produced them. In that tension, you can see modern humanities taking shape - not abandoning the catalogue, but insisting it isn’t the whole truth.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Einstein, Alfred. (2026, January 15). It was inevitable that in doing this I should arrive at new results, and it is perhaps understandable that in the end I have felt impelled to present these results not only in the dry form of a catalogue, but also in a more connected and personal one. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-was-inevitable-that-in-doing-this-i-should-169244/
Chicago Style
Einstein, Alfred. "It was inevitable that in doing this I should arrive at new results, and it is perhaps understandable that in the end I have felt impelled to present these results not only in the dry form of a catalogue, but also in a more connected and personal one." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-was-inevitable-that-in-doing-this-i-should-169244/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It was inevitable that in doing this I should arrive at new results, and it is perhaps understandable that in the end I have felt impelled to present these results not only in the dry form of a catalogue, but also in a more connected and personal one." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-was-inevitable-that-in-doing-this-i-should-169244/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.







