“…I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility…” ~ Richard Feynman
The inimitable and endlessly quotable Richard Feynman always makes for entertaining – and enlightening – reading.
Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman is part physics lecture, part biography and complete delight.
A Nobel prize, winner, atom-bomb contributor, and occasional amateur philosopher, Richard Feynman, was not your stereotypical rocket scientist – he liked the ladies, (famously) enjoyed playing the bongo drums, had a side-gig as a successful professional artist, and was possessed of a wicked sense of humour.
I suspect he was lucky to live in the times he did. I’m not sure today’s siloed, suspicious, sensitive, politically polarised academics and institutions would have known what to make of him.
“I would rather have questions that cannot be answers, than answers that cannot be questioned.” ~ Richard Feynman
So would I.
If I learned one this form this book it would be to keep questioning everything.
“It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared by welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.” ~ Richard Feynman