Author of quotes: Richard Feynman

Once I even thought about taking the drug, but I got scared: I like to think and I don’t want to spoil the machine that helps me with this.

What I can't recreate, I don't understand.

The less culture people have, the less they are able to think, the sooner they lose their heads.

Physics is like sex: it may not give practical results, but this is not a reason not to do it.

My prize is the pleasure of knowing the essence of things, the thrill of the discovery made. It is important for me to know that other people enjoy the fruits of my labor. That's what is essential, and the awards are so ... someone's invention. I don't trust awards; awards, damn it, bother, awards are visibility, like epaulettes, like a beautiful military uniform. My father explained it to me that way.

But I remember sitting with my mother in a restaurant in New York just after (Hiroshima), peering into the city, and knowing how big the Hiroshima bomb was and what a huge area it destroyed, in fact, knowing everything about it, I suddenly thought : “What if we drop it around 34th Street?” It will cover the area where we are sitting - I think it was 59th Street - and all the people will be killed, all the buildings will be destroyed, and there are more than one such bomb. It is easy to continue their production - and all life on earth will be doomed. This thought occurred to me very early, earlier than other, more optimistic people.

... I have adopted a new principle, which is that I do not bear any responsibility for what others expect of me. I don't have to be good because I'm expected to be.

You cannot argue that A is made of B, or vice versa. Any mass is an interaction.

If you know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, about the bird you still don't know anything... Better watch it carefully, watch how it behaves. That's what is really important. I realized very early the difference between “knowing the name of something” and “know something”.

One other thing I was not able to achieve them - questions. In the end, one student explained to me: "If I ask You a question during a lecture, then everyone will say: "Why are you wasting our time in the classroom? We try to learn something. And you're stopping him by asking a question". It was a kind of one-upmanship, as nobody knew what was happening, and was just pretending to understand. They pretended that they are clear. And if someone asked the question, recognizing thereby that it is not all clear, he looked down and said that it takes time.
I explained how it is useful to work together, to discuss all the problems, all to the end to find out, but they didn't do it, because asking a question, they dropped their dignity. Poor man! Reasonable people, and how much work they spent, but learned this ridiculous, warped view of things and did their "education" is meaningless, utterly meaningless.

I don't think I could live without teaching. The reason is that I just need something to do and when I have run out of ideas or I don't get any results, I, as a teacher, all I can say to myself: "At least, I marvel a normal life; at least, do something, make some contribution" - a purely psychological reason.

... I thought girls had a lot heavier than you guys. In those days girls couldn't ask to cut in and dance with boys; it was "indecent". So not too pretty girls would sit on the sidelines and missed. I thought, "Boys are easier: they can Wade in when they want". But you were not. You "can" but you don't have the courage, reason or whatever it is that you need to relax and get dancing pleasure. Instead, you just tie in a knot worrying about how to drive a wedge into the crowd or to ask a girl to dance with you.

... So I invited her to a movie. It was my first date.
I went home and told mom about it. She gave me many different tips on how to do it like that. For example, if we go by bus then I should go first and submit to Barbara's hand. Or if we go down the street, then I have to go on the outside of the sidewalk. She even told me what to say. She passed I inherited cultural tradition: women teach their sons to be treated well with the next generation of women.

... whole life - a reproduction. No matter how complex the process, the main task - to repeat it!