I always tried to do it myself, because I’d learn something, maybe get a different idea. I never looked it up.

For a very quick summary, I see nothing wrong with nuclear power except questions of the possibility of explosions, sabotage, stealing fuel to make bombs, leaking stored radioactive spent rods, etc.

Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle...

I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe within any purpose, which is the way it really is, so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.

Theoretically, (government) planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity — and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated.

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.

Don’t think of what “you want to be,” but what you “want to do.”

All you have to do is, from time to time — in spite of everything, just try to examine a problem in a novel way.

There’s no talent, no special ability to understand quantum mechanics, or to imagine electromagnetic fields, that comes without practice and reading and learning and study.

In fact, the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right.

I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the checker board with all its apparent complexities.

Why repeat all this? Because there are new generations born every day. Because there are very great ideas developed in the history of man, and these ideas do not last unless they are passed purposely and clearly from generation to generation.

I am curious on how reliable old memories are and wonder how much we make up in our own mind when we review events. Maybe we remember saying what we would have liked to say.

I have a philosophy that it doesn’t do any good to go and make regrets about what you did before but to try and remember how you made the decision at the time.

There is no authority who decides what is a good idea.

I’ve already got the prize: The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel prize.

Some guy who made a lot of money on dynamite wants to make himself a big thing and put his name on the big prize so everybody will remember the name “Nobel,” and for that I got to be annoyed. The hell with it.

I’m an explorer, okay? I get curious about everything, and I want to investigate all kinds of stuff.

I entered MIT in mathematics, changed to electrical engineering for a while and then settled in physics.

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

Feynman's Last Blackboard:

Know how to solve every problem that has been solved. – Written on his blackboard when Feynman died