One night […] I dreamed that I had a rather pleasant sensation in my right leg. The sensation increased in intensity, and I began to wake up. It grew even more intense. I woke up more fully and discovered that it had been a severe pain all the time. The sensation itself told me that it had been a sensation of immense pain, which I had mistaken for a sensation of pleasure.
Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, Chicago, 1995, p. 117
Dear Imre,
If the worst comes to the worst, we have 8 days together. Now, let me suggest how to spend them. First day morning: my flat business in London; afternoon: Sussex. There remain seven days. Now I suggest that you send me (1) your MS of AM with all the cuts, changes etc. suggested by you and (2) as much as you have of the clean copy of my translation with your comments in the margin and suggestions for change, and dictionary. […] So by the time I come to London we shall not need more than two days to discuss what remains. […] There still remain five days. Now you may have finished MAM before I come. If there is still enough time to send it to me I shall have had time to read it and to make my first informal comments. I shall also have made a sketch of my answer. One day for discussing both. There remain four days to chase after girls—and this if the worst comes to the worst[.]
Paul Feyerabend, Letter to Imre Lakatos, July 19, 1972, in Matteo Motterlini (ed.), For and Against Method: Including Lakatos’s Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence, Chicago, 1999, p. 286
These may be the last days. We are taking them one at a time. My latest paralysis was the result of some bleeding inside the brain. My concern is that after my departure something remains of me, not papers, not final philosophical declarations, but love. I hope that that will remain and will not be too much affected by the manner of my final departure, which I would like to be peaceful, like a coma, without a death struggle, leaving bad memories behind. Whatever happens now, our small family can live forever—Grazina, me, and our love. That is what I would like to happen, not an intellectual survival but the survival of love.
Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, Chicago, 1995, p. 181
The depression stayed with me for over a year; it was like an animal, a well-defined, spatially localizable thing. I would wake up, open my eyes, listen –Is it here or isn’t? No sign of it. Perhaps it’s asleep. Perhaps it will leave me alone today. Carefully, very carefully, I get out of bed. All is quiet. I go to the kitchen, start breakfast. Not a sound. TV -Good Morning America-, David What’s-his-name, a guy I can’t stand. I eat and watch the guests. Slowly the food fills my stomach and gives me strength. Now a quick excursion to the bathroom, and out for my morning walk -and here she is, my faithful depression: “Did you think you could leave without me?”
Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, Chicago, 1995, p. 147
You [Lakatos] say that Sir K just messed up Hume’s problem. This is precisely what Schrödinger said, and I was there when he said it. It is a very interesting story. Karl wanted to dedicate the English edition of the Logic of Sci. etc. to Schrödinger. He had never given the book to Schrödinger to read and wanted to know, desperately, what he thought of it. Karl was sitting at the Böglerhof, Schrödinger was at another restaurant in Alpbach, in a very bad temper: “This Popper! There he gives me this confused book of his and wants me to consent to have my name on the first page. He says he does something about Hume’s problem – but he doesn’t, he just talks, and talks, and talks, and Hume’s problem is still unsolved”. So I tried to explain to him the difference between the problem of demarcation and the problem of induction. “Yes, yes,” he said, “I know, he solves the one BUT HE DOESN’T SOLVE THE OTHER and that is just what Hume said, that it couldn’t be solved…” etc. etc
Paul Feyerabend, Letter to Imre Lakatos, January 11, 1974, in Matteo Motterlini (ed.), For and Against Method: Including Lakatos’s Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence, Chicago, 1999, p. 353