The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
'Cargo Cult Science', Caltech commencement address (1974)
RF
Richard Feynman quotes
1918-1988 ยท Scientists and inventors
Nobel Prize winning physicist, teacher and author known for quantum electrodynamics.
8 quotes, 8 traced to where Feynman said or wrote them.
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
Written on his Caltech blackboard (1988)
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)
Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.
Letter to J. M. Szabados (1965), in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations (2005)
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, BBC interview (1981)
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Rogers Commission Report on the Challenger disaster, Appendix F (1986)
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)
The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
'The Value of Science', National Academy of Sciences address (1955)