No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
Interpretation
Every problem, regardless of its size, matters if we can address it effectively.
Richard P. Feynman's quote emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and addressing all problems, no matter how insignificant they may appear. It highlights the value of taking action and the belief that our efforts can make a difference, reinforcing the idea that every challenge is worthy of our attention if we have the means to resolve it.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges, one could quote Feynman to inspire others.
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.
I love not rushing the process. Mind doesn't shift until it does, and when it does shift, it's right on time, not one second too late or too soon. People are like seeds waiting to sprout. We can't be pushed ahead of our own understanding.
In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.
There was a point in my 40s when I went into the bathroom with a bottle of wine, locked the door, and said, 'I'm not coming out until I can totally accept the way that I look right now.'
A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.
Gratitude is like a flashlight. It lights up what is already there. You don't necessarily have anything more or different, but suddenly you can actually see what it is. And because you can see, you no longer take it for granted.
Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
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