“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work.”
Richard Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Primary source)
A delightful collection of autobiographical anecdotes revealing Feynman’s insatiable curiosity and playful irreverence, from safecracking at Los Alamos to bongo drumming in Greenwich Village, illustrating how brilliance and joy coexisted in one extraordinary life.
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“The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“Knowledge is of no real value if all you can tell me is what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
— Richard Feynman Primary sourceMore quotes by Richard Feynman →
“Because people are very careful with the secrets of their own business doesn’t mean that they’ll be careful with the secrets of yours.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“I’m afraid that’s the way it [reality] is. If there are twenty factors and they interact some, you’ll have to learn to handle it—because that’s the way the world is. But you won’t find it that hard if you go at it Darwin-like, step by step with curious persistence. You’ll be amazed at how good you can get.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“The only way to have real success in science, the field I’m familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good and what’s bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source