Barun Pandey

None is more beautiful than the one Richard wrote to Arline sixteen months after her death.

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last

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If you’re told what to look for, you can’t see anything else. ...

I think there’s a lot of premature labeling. Now, the situation in teaching is different. You’re trying to point out where people should see. But analytical seeing, I believe you should try to stay in the sheer optical experience as long as possible.

Once you have an idea, or

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In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it

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Interviewer: If you get hold of two magnets, and you push them, you can feel this pushing between them. Turn them around the other way, and they slam together. Now, what is it, the feeling between those two magnets?

Feynman: What do you mean, “What’s the feeling between the two magnets?”

There’s something there, isn’t there? The sensation is that... See more

Real knowledge is intrinsic, and it’s built from the ground up. To use a math example, you can’t understand trigonometry without understanding arithmetic and geometry. Basically, if someone is using a lot of fancy words and a lot of big concepts, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. I think the smartest people can explain things to... See more

The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point

is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking.

If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more

complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully

formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully

formed ideas about... See more

Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you

wrote was what you thought before you wrote it. These were your

ideas, and now you've expressed them. But you know this isn't true.

You know that putting your ideas into words changed them. And not

just the ideas you published. Presumably there were others that

turned out to be too broken... See more

Tetel-Andresen writes in her book that she gives students an assignment: Draw how you visualize the sequence of months.

Pause your reading and think about what you would draw.

For me, time is constantly flowing. The present month, July 2022, will soon be part of the past.

I drew a timeline, which started with the current month and extended into the... See more