I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a strong focus on science in Feynman's youth, suggesting a deep commitment and possibly a lack of balance with other interests.
Richard P. Feynman's quote reveals his intense dedication to science during his younger years, implying that his singular focus may have limited his exposure to other fields or experiences. This one-sidedness highlights the passion that can accompany a deep pursuit of knowledge, while also suggesting the importance of having a more rounded perspective in life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of pursuing one's passions.
The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
...for a long time I wanted to become a theologian... now, however, behold how through my efforts God is being debated in astronomy.
The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.
We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.
For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.
The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?
I think the rise of quantitative econometrics and a highly mathematical approach to risk management was the obverse of a decline in interest in financial history.
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