If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, 'Oh, I forgot that bit,' then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you've figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!
Interpretation
Learning from others can improve our own understanding and efficiency.
This quote by Richard P. Feynman emphasizes the importance of learning from the experiences and solutions of others when facing difficulties. It illustrates how reference materials, such as books, can reignite our understanding of a problem and reveal more effective methods to solve it, suggesting a humble acknowledgment of our own limitations in knowledge.
In practice
In a workshop about problem-solving techniques, this quote can inspire participants to learn from established methods.
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.
When you touch the life of a man of this generation, that influence is felt through generations yet to come.
The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.
Never bring the problem solving stage into the decision making stage. Otherwise, you surrender yourself to the problem rather than the solution.
All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.
Don't use big words. They mean so little.
It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.
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