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Richard Feynman

Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965

United States · 1918–1988

Theoretical physicist at Cornell and then the California Institute of Technology. Shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on quantum electrodynamics, and served on the presidential commission investigating the Challenger accident.

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Recorded · On the billboard

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.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why? Caltech commencement address, Pasadena, California, Caltech Engineering and Science (Caltech Library archive), 1 June 1974 source

What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?

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

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