Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.
Interpretation
Pursue your passions with intensity and creativity, without strict adherence to conventional methods.
This quote by Richard P. Feynman emphasizes the importance of studying what you are truly passionate about. It encourages individuals to approach learning with a spirit of curiosity and originality, suggesting that the most effective way to learn is through a personal and sometimes unconventional exploration of one's interests.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a commencement speech to inspire graduates to pursue their interests.
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 think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.
If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.
Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.
The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything.
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
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