I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.
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Richard Feynman
Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
United States · 1918–1988
Science and medicine
About
Theoretical physicist at Cornell and then the California Institute of Technology. Shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on quantum electrodynamics, and served on the presidential commission investigating the Challenger accident.
20 answers
Recorded · On the billboard
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.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist.
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