I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos.

The moment I start to think about the physics, and have to concentrate on what I’m explaining, nothing else occupies my mind - I’m completely immune to being nervous.

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, ;At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution’ - it’s just psychological.

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.

When you’re young, you have all these things to worry about - should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but then something else comes up. It’s much easier to just plain decide. Never mind - nothing is going to change your mind. I did that once when I was a student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again - I had the solution to that problem.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.

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 to not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

You should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist.