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75b9601
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You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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b0a08f5
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What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.
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science
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Richard P. Feynman |
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7983042
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You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
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science
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Richard P. Feynman |
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0d5b941
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All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' -- which is just another way of saying that you can't.
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success
humor
inspirational
failure
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Richard P. Feynman |
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0f62377
|
So I have just one wish for you - the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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f038680
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When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: "We *know* all that!" "Oh," I say, "you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes."
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learning
science
physics
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Richard P. Feynman |
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94d01a4
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I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
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humor
intelligence
statistics
mathematics
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Richard P. Feynman |
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75840b9
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What Do You Care What Other People Think?
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Richard P. Feynman |
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aeedc33
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and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them and try to help them out. But pompous fools - guys who are fools and covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus - THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
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Richard P. Feynman |
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aae35af
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Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you *play* with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things..
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humor
programming
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Richard P. Feynman |
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3b37cd0
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Mathematics is a language plus reasoning; it is like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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072717a
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Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.
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thought-provoking-humourous
richard-feynmann
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Richard P. Feynman |
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58356e5
|
I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.
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looks
woman
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Richard P. Feynman |
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25550a6
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Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?" - all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life." --
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science
rationality
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Richard P. Feynman |
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cf6ba2c
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Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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8f65821
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I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently ar..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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96903fe
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I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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84aab18
|
It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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e0f125d
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You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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6985add
|
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified -- how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know wha..
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learning
science
physics
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Richard P. Feynman |
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df52dac
|
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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bdaa7da
|
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way--by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
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Richard P. Feynman |
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802c27c
|
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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e67761e
|
There was a Princess Somebody of Denmark sitting at a table with a number of people around her, and I saw an empty chair at their table and sat down. She turned to me and said, "Oh! You're one of the Nobel-Prize-winners. In what field did you do your work?" "In physics," I said. "Oh. Well, nobody knows anything about that, so I guess we can't talk about it." "On the contrary," I answered. "It's because somebody knows something about it that..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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4e55ee5
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I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.
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richard-feynmann
self-value
values-in-life
thought-provoking
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Richard P. Feynman |
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a58a6f5
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You have to have absolute confidence. Keep right on going, and nothing will happen.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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9955af5
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It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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96974a0
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We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imagining of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck-half of us upside down-by a mysterious attraction, to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years, than to be carried on the back of ..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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4fbb337
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it is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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0f33381
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That's the trouble with not being in your own field: You don't take it seriously.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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3f2a13f
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You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!
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science
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Richard P. Feynman |
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32129e3
|
innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world
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Richard P. Feynman |
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05261dd
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I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.
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science
physics
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Richard P. Feynman |
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89a7d5a
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The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels." I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? "People read."
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Richard P. Feynman |
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eeed702
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For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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911c79a
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When I tried to show him how an electromagnet works by making a little coil of wire and hanging a nail on a piece of string, I put the voltage on, the nail swung into the coil, and Jerry said, "Ooh! It's just like fucking!"
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Richard P. Feynman |
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3b75c00
|
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. ..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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064620a
|
In fact the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right...
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Richard P. Feynman |
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8b6f46f
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I have to keep going to find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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5beb117
|
How I'm rushing through this! How much each sentence in this brief story contains. "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars--mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more ? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagina-tion--s..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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a002618
|
I believe that we must attack these things in which we do not believe. Not attack by the method of cutting off the heads of the people, but attack in the sense of discuss. I believe that we should demand that people try in their own minds to obtain for themselves a more consistent picture of their own world; that they not permit themselves the luxury of having their brain cut in four pieces or two pieces even, and on one side they believe t..
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Richard P. Feynman |
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3c96dc9
|
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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fa60bfd
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Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.
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Richard P. Feynman |
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0175399
|
Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
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Richard P. Feynman |