We know there are over 380,000 children across the UK today that have never owned a book, children that are in vulnerable environments. That has to change. My books are, and always will be, for every child, even if I have to deliver them myself. We will reach them.
If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why?
Question
What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you have ever made — of money, time, or energy?
Money & investment
Question
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
Daily life
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Daily life
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your favourite side project?
Craft & work
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.
Caltech commencement address, Pasadena, California, Caltech Engineering and Science (Caltech Library archive), 1 June 1974 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 23 →
Marcus Rashford
England international footballer
Recorded
Statement on the launch of the Marcus Rashford Book Club, Sky Sports, 16 November 2020
source ↗
Rahul Dravid
India Test and one-day international cricketer, 1996–2012; later India head coach
One of the things, Bradman said has stayed in my mind. That the finest of athletes had, along with skill, a few more essential qualities: to conduct their life with dignity, with integrity, with courage and modesty. All this he believed, were totally compatible with pride, ambition, determination and competitiveness. Maybe those words should be put up in cricket dressing rooms all over the world.
Recorded
Bradman Oration, Anzac Hall, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ESPNcricinfo, 14 December 2011
source ↗
Peter Doherty
Veterinary surgeon and immunologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1996
I share Alfred Nobel's conviction that war is the greatest of all human disasters. Infectious disease runs a good second.
Recorded
Laureate-written autobiography for Les Prix Nobel, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 December 1996
source ↗
Muhammad Yunus
Founder of Grameen Bank; Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 2006
In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.
Recorded
Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 10 December 2006
source ↗
More from Richard Feynman
View profile →So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy solution for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.
Recorded
Excerpt from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine, 1985
source ↗
the colonel said I shouldn't tell them how the neutrons work and all the details because we want to keep things separate, so just tell them what to do to keep it safe.
So I wish to you—I have no more time, 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. May I also give you one last bit of advice: Never say that you'll give a talk unless you know clearly what you're going to talk about and more or less what you're going to say.
Recorded
Caltech commencement address, Pasadena, California, Caltech Engineering and Science (Caltech Library archive), 1 June 1974
source ↗
one of my diseases, one of my things in life, is that anything that is secret I try to undo. And so the locks to those filing cabinets represented a challenge to me. How the hell to open them? So I worked and worked on them. There are all kinds of stories about how you can feel the numbers and listen to things and so on. That's true; I understand it very well - for old- 19 fashioned safes. But these had a new design so that nothing would be pushing against the wheels while you were trying them, and none of the old methods would work. I read books by locksmiths, which always say in the beginning how they opened the locks when the safe is under water and the woman in it is drowning or some-thing, and the great locksmith opened the safe. And then in the back they tell you how they do it, and they don't tell you anything sensible. It doesn't sound like they could really open safes that way — like guess the combination on the basis of the psychology of the person who owns it! So I always figured they were keeping the method a secret, and like a kind of disease, I kept working on these things until I found out a few things. First, I found out how big a range you need to open the combination, how close you have to be. And then I invented a system by which you could try all the necessary combinations - 8,000, as it turned out, because the woman DROWNING عزه Books are always telling how the great locksmith opens the safe under water when the woman in it is drowning. 20 you could be within two of every number. And then I worked out a scheme by which I could try numbers without altering a number that I had already set, by correctly moving the wheels, so that I could try all the combinations in eight hours. And then finally I discovered (this took me about two years of researching) that it's easy to take the last two numbers of the combination off the safe if the safe is open. If the drawer was pulled out, you could turn the number and see the bolt go up and play around and find out what number it comes back at, and stuff like that. With a little trickery, you can get the combination off. So I used to practice it like a cardsharp practices cards, you know - all the time. Quicker and quicker and more and more unobtrusively I would come in and talk to some guy. I'd sort of lean against his filing cabinet, and you wouldn't even notice I'm doing any-thing. I'm not doing anything— just playing with the dial, that's all, just playing with the dial. But all the time I was taking the two numbers off! And then I would go back to my office and write the two numbers down, the last two numbers of the three. Now, if you have the last two numbers, it takes just a minute to try for the first number; there's only 20 possibilities, and it's open. OK? It takes about three minutes to open a safe if you know the last two numbers. So I got an excellent reputation for safe-cracking.
It's made me a very happy man ever since.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?”
Recorded
Excerpt from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine, 1985
source ↗
More on time & hindsight
- When were you happiest? 577 answers
- What is the most important lesson life has taught you? 137 answers
- What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore? 78 answers
- What scares you about getting older? 61 answers
- What is the best advice you have ever received? 28 answers
- What is something you were told by a parent, teacher, or mentor that you still repeat to yourself? 23 answers
Also answered this
Denis Mukwege, Ahmed Zewail, Peter Doherty, Wangari Maathai, Angela Merkel, Eleanor Roosevelt
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All time & hindsight questions
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject