These 5 Quotes By Richard Feynman Scream How Badass His Ideology Was & Why He Will Live In Our Hearts Forever
“Was It Worth A Noble Prize? I Don’t Know. I Don’t Know Anything About The Noble Prize. It’s A Pain In The A**”
Feynman was always a part of my high school Physics books.
But for those who are new to him, he was a Nobel laureate who pushed forward what humanity can do, through his exceptional work in the field of Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Electrodynamics.
It wasn’t until the day I heard Naval Ravikant talking about him that I discovered how groundbreaking his ideas on learning, life and society were.
His photo has been on Naval’s Twitter banner for years and Naval mentions Feynman all the time in his tweets and podcasts.
When I went through his books and videos, I realised that the way Feynman lived his life was strikingly different from everyone else’s (including other physicists).
Here are his top 5 quotes that I want to share with you, that deeply influence my life.
1. “The First Principle Is That You Must Not Fool Yourself And You Are The Easiest Person To Fool.”
We all fool each other.
Our goals are borrowed and our aspirations are largely the result of our childhood trauma.
In this game, the person who we end up fooling the most is ourselves.
Look at an average person — deeply dissatisfied with work and relationships, too afraid to act to improve and believes way too strongly in luck and destiny.
The average person fools themselves every day that their life is good (when it sucks), that this is how life is meant to be, and that average societal norms are what one should abide by.
The average person has time to watch Netflix every night and get drunk over the weekends but fools themselves about having no time to read books/ learn new skills that will improve their life.
It’s a sad reality.
The worst part is that if this is pointed out, one’s ego is such that they will make it a point to resist all your efforts at all costs.
Feynman addresses this strongly and urges one to get self-aware.
He asks one to not fool him/herself.
2. “Fall In Love With Some Activity, And Do It! Nobody Ever Figures Out What Life Is All About, And It Doesn’t Matter.”
This one is slightly longer and it goes like this:
“Fall in love with some activity, and do it!
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter.
Explore the world.
Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best.
Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.
Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”
Feynman advises one to explore widely and then double down on their obsession.
He encourages one to have a mindset of curiosity and deep exploration.
This is what every young person out there needs — working a lot on what they love at their core (when society thinks that beach vacations are real fun. LOL, try doing it for more than a month every day.)
3. “What I Cannot Create, I Do Not Understand.”
Feynman is a strong believer in learning things from the first principles.
He loves to break everything down to the basics and then build them from the ground up.
In another instance, he says:
“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
He urges you not to rote learn and derive things on your own from scratch.
If you cannot, you don’t really know that thing. You’ve just memorised a societally acceptable and respected version of it.
4. “I’m Smart Enough To Know That I’m Dumb.”
In an era where everyone is a self-proclaimed expert on everything, Feynman recognizes that he cannot know it all.
This recognition is anti-Dunning Kruger Effect.
This recognition is a hallmark of true wisdom.
It’s a reflection of his deep intellectual humility in admitting that no matter how much one knows, there’s always more to learn.
By admitting his “dumbness,” Feynman kept himself down to earth, open to new ideas and strived towards lifelong learning.
5. “Was It Worth A Noble Prize? I Don’t Know. I Don’t Know Anything About The Noble Prize. It’s A Pain In The A**”
This one is from a BBC interview with Feynman.
The interviewer asks him: “Was it worth a noble prize?”
Feynman’s answer to the question is shocking and immensely counterintuitive.
Here’s what Feynman says:
I don’t know.
I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what and if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that X Y or Z wins a Nobel Prize then so be it. I won’t have anything to do with a Nobel Prize.
It’s a pain in the a**.
He further continues on his dislike for honours and how it bothers him deeply.
I don’t like honours. I appreciate it for the work that I did and for people who appreciate it and I noticed other physicists used my work.
I don’t need anything else and I don’t think there is any sense to anything else.
I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize.
I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding a thing out, of the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it.
Those are the real things. The honours are unreal to me.
He then tells a story from his high school days where the first honour he got was to be a member of a group of kids who got good grades.
Everybody around him wanted to be a member of the group and when he got into it, he discovered that what they did in their meetings was to sit around to discuss who else was worthy to join this “wonderful group”, who it was who would get to be allowed into the ‘Tsarist’.
“This kind of thing bothers me psychologically”, he says.
I had trouble with this when I became a member of the National Academy of Science and I had ultimately to resign because there was another organization most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join the organization.
The whole thing was rotten.
Honours are epaulettes, honours are uniforms. My papa brought me up this way I can’t stand it.
It hurts me.
I’ll add a last one from him.
One that needs no description.
Fenyman passed away on February 15, 1988, and despite dedicating all his life to Physics, here is what he has to say at the end.
“Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is.”
Feynman is close to my heart. Has he inspired you yet? Let me know in the comments below.
See you soon! Take care :)
Where do I read more about him ?