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To Develop Working Ideas Efficiently, I Try To Fail As Fast As I Can.
-Richard P. Feynman
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To Develop Working Ideas

Richard P. Feynman
...
To Develop Working Ideas Efficiently, I Try To Fail As Fast As I Can.

Understanding the Quote: "to develop working ideas efficiently, i try to fail as fast as..."

This quote by Richard P. Feynman reflects deeply on the theme of failure. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Failure, Ideas, Trying, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Richard P. Feynman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Richard P. Feynman

Richard P. Feynman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on failure and ideas. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 78027
Topic
Failure
Ideas
Trying
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I Have To Disregard Everybody Else, And Then I Can Do My Own Work.
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People
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Honesty
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Philosophy
Responsibility
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Religion
You See, The Chemists Have A Complicated Way Of Counting: Instead Of Saying "one, Two, Three, Four, Five Protons", They Say, "hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron."
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The Inside Of A Computer Is As Dumb As Hell But It Goes Like Mad!
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First You Guess. Don't Laugh, This Is The Most Important Step. Then You Compute The Consequences. Compare The Consequences To Experience. If It Disagrees With Experience, The Guess Is Wrong. In That Simple Statement Is The Key To Science. It Doesn't Matter How Beautiful Your Guess Is Or How Smart You Are Or What Your Name Is. If It Disagrees With Experience, It's Wrong. That's All There Is To It.
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Energy Is A Very Subtle Concept. It Is Very, Very Difficult To Get Right.
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Trying
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Everybody Who Reasons Carefully About Anything Is Making A Contribution ... And If You Abstract It Away And Send It To The Department Of Mathematics They Put It In Books.
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If The Professors Of English Will Complain To Me That The Students Who Come To The Universities, After All Those Years Of Study, Still Cannot Spell 'friend,' I Say To Them That Something's The Matter With The Way You Spell Friend.
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Complaining
Matter
Science Is A Way Of Trying Not To Fool Yourself.
Atheism
Trying
Way
It Is Scientific Only To Say What Is More Likely And What Less Likely, And Not To Be Proving All The Time The Possible And Impossible.
Possible And Impossible
Impossible
Prove
I Learned A Lot Of Different Things From Different Schools. Mit Is A Very Good Place…. It Has Developed For Itself A Spirit, So That Every Member Of The Whole Place Thinks That It’s The Most Wonderful Place In The World—it’s The Center, Somehow, Of Scientific And Technological Development In The United States, If Not The World … And While You Don’t Get A Good Sense Of Proportion There, You Do Get An Excellent Sense Of Being With It And In It, And Having Motivation And Desire To Keep On
Motivation
Learning
School
Listen, I Mean That From My Knowledge Of The World That I See Around Me, I Think That It Is Much More Likely That The Reports Of Flying Saucers Are The Results Of The Known Irrational Characteristics Of Terrestrial Intelligence Than Of The Unknown Rational Efforts Of Extra-terrestrial Intelligence.
Mean
Thinking
Effort
You Do Not Know Anything Until You Have Practiced.
Knows
Nature Isn't Classical, Dammit, And If You Want To Make A Simulation Of Nature, You'd Better Make It Quantum Mechanical, And By Golly It's A Wonderful Problem, Because It Doesn't Look So Easy.
Looks
Want
Problem
Nature's Imagination Far Surpasses Our Own.
Imagination
Every Instrument That Has Been Designed To Be Sensitive Enough To Detect Weak Light Has Always Ended Up Discovering That The Same Thing: Light Is Made Of Particles.
Light
Sensitive
Enough
No! Not For A Second! I Immediately Began To Think How This Could Have Happened. And I Realized That The Clock Was Old And Was Always Breaking. That The Clock Probably Stopped Some Time Before And The Nurse Coming In To The Room To Record The Time Of Death Would Have Looked At The Clock And Jotted Down The Time From That. I Never Made Any Supernatural Connection, Not Even For A Second. I Just Wanted To Figure Out How It Happened.
Thinking
Nurse
Atheism
[when A Young Person Loses Faith In His Religion Because He Begins To Study Science And Its Methodology] It Isn't That [through The Obtaining Of Real Knowledge That] He Knows It All, But He Suddenly Realizes That He Doesn't Know It All.
Real
Thinking
Study
I Learned Very Early The Difference Between Knowing The Name Of Something And Knowing Something.
Inspirational
Motivational
Education
There Is Enough Energy In A Single Cubic Meter Of Space To Boil All The Oceans In The World.
Ocean
Space
Energy
Progress In Science Comes When Experiments Contradict Theory.
Science
Progress
Theory
Scientific Views End In Awe And Mystery, Lost At The Edge In Uncertainty, But They Appear To Be So Deep And So Impressive That The Theory That It Is All Arranged As A Stage For God To Watch Man's Struggle For Good And Evil Seems Inadequate.
Fear
Struggle
Men
There’s So Much Distance Between The Fundamental Rules And The Final Phenomenon, That It’s Almost Unbelievable That The Final Variety Of Phenomenon Can Come From Such A Steady Operation Of Such Simple Rules.
Distance
Simple
Finals
It Does Not Make Any Difference How Beautiful Your Guess Is. It Does Not Make Any Difference How Smart You Are, Who Made The Guess, Or What His Name Is If It Disagrees With Experiment It Is Wrong. That Is All There Is To It.
Beautiful
Smart
Names
The Real Problem In Speech Is Not Precise Language. The Problem Is Clear Language.
Learning
Language
Problem
I Was Terrible In English. I Couldn't Stand The Subject. It Seemed To Me Ridiculous To Worry About Whether You Spelled Something Wrong Or Not, Because English Spelling Is Just A Human Convention--it Has Nothing To Do With Anything Real, Anything From Nature. Any Word Can Be Spelled Just As Well A Different Way.
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Worry
Different
The Basis Of Action On Love, The Brotherhood Of All Men, The Value Of The Individual... The Humility Of The Spirit.
Humility
Pride
Men
It's Amazing How Many People Even Today Use A Computer To Do Something You Can Do With A Pencil And Paper In Less Time.
People
Simplicity
Use
The Game I Play Is A Very Interesting One. It's Imagination, In A Tight Straightjacket.
Play
Games
Interesting
I Don't Have To Be Good Because They Think I'm Going To Be Good.
Thinking
Be Good
As Revealed By Physics, The Truth Is So Remarkable, So Amazing!
Physics
Truth Is
Remarkable
But Logic Is Not All, One Needs One's Heart To Follow An Idea.
Heart
Ideas
Needs
The Problem Of Creating Something New, But Which Is Consistent With Everything Which Has Been Seen Before, Is One Of Extreme Difficulty.
Creating
Problem
Something New
If You Can't Explain Something To A First Year Student, Then You Haven't Really Understood .
Years
Firsts
Students
For A Successful Technology, Reality Must Take Precedence Over Public Relations, For Nature Cannot Be Fooled.
Inspirational
Nature
Science
My Rule Is, When You Are Unhappy, Think About It. But When You're Happy, Don't. Why Spoil It? You're Probably Happy For Some Ridiculous Reason And You'd Just Spoil It To Know It.
Thinking
Unhappy
Ridiculous
No Problem Is Too Small Or Too Trivial If We Can Really Do Something About It.
Problem
No Problem
Ifs
It Doesn't Seem To Me That This Fantastically Marvelous Universe, This Tremendous Range Of Time And Space And Different Kinds Of Animals, And All The Different Planets, And All These Atoms With All Their Motions, And So On, All This Complicated Thing Can Merely Be A Stage So That God Can Watch Human Beings Struggle For Good And Evil - Which Is The View That Religion Has. The Stage Is Too Big For The Drama.
Atheist
Drama
Struggle
On The Contrary, It's Because Somebody Knows Something About It That We Can't Talk About Physics . It's The Things That Nobody Knows Anything About That We Can Discuss. We Can Talk About The Weather; We Can Talk About Social Problems; We Can Talk About Psychology; We Can Talk About International Finance Gold Transfers We Can't Talk About, Because Those Are Understood So It's The Subject That Nobody Knows Anything About That We Can All Talk About!
Weather
Psychology
Gold
I Have To Keep Going To Find Out Ultimately What Is The Matter With It In The End.
Matter
Ends
Keep Going
I, A Universe Of Atoms, An Atom In The Universe.
Atoms
Cosmology
Universe
The Female Mind Is Capable Of Understanding Analytic Geometry... The Difficulty May Just Be That We Have Never Yet Discovered A Way To Communicate With The Female Mind. If It Is Done In The Right Way, You May Be Able To Get Something Out Of It.
Understanding
Mind
Female
Our Imagination Is Stretched To The Utmost, Not, As In Fiction, To Imagine Things Which Are Not Really There, But Just To Comprehend Those Things Which Are There.
Real
Science
Imagination
It Is In The Admission Of Ignorance And The Admission Of Uncertainty That There Is A Hope For The Continuous Motion Of Human Beings In Some Direction That Doesn't Get Confined, Permanently Blocked, As It Has So Many Times Before In Various Periods In The History Of Man.
Ignorance
Men
Thinking
Don't Pay Attention To "authorities," Think For Yourself.
Thinking
Attention
Pay
Our Responsibility Is To Do What We Can, Learn What We Can, Improve The Solutions, And Pass Them On.
Responsibility
Unreasonable
Human Race
But See That The Imagination Of Nature Is Far, Far Greater Than The Imagination Of Man.
Nature
Men
Imagination
We Are Trying To Prove Ourselves Wrong As Quickly As Possible, Because Only In That Way Can We Find Progress.
Science
Progress
Trying
Fall In Love With Some Activity, And Do It! Nobody Ever Figures Out What Life Is All About, And It Doesn't Matter.
Falling In Love
Commitment
Matter
I Don't Think That The Laws Can Be Considered To Be Like God Because They Have Been Figured Out.
Thinking
Law
Atheism
That Is The Logical Tight-rope On Which We Have To Walk If We Wish To Interpret Nature.
Science
Wish
Rope
If There Is Something Very Slightly Wrong In Our Definition Of The Theories, Then The Full Mathematical Rigor May Convert These Errors Into Ridiculous Conclusions.
Science
Errors
May
Philosophers Say A Great Deal About What Is Absolutely Necessary For Science, And It Is Always, So Far As One Can See, Rather Naive, And Probably Wrong.
Philosopher
Deals
Naive
There Is No Harm In Doubt And Skepticism, For It Is Through These That New Discoveries Are Made.
Science
Discovery
Doubt
Science Is The Organized Skepticism In The Reliability Of Expert Opinion
Reliability
Experts
Opinion
A Philosopher Once Said, 'it Is Necessary For The Very Existence Of Science That The Same Conditions Always Produce The Same Results.' Well, They Don't!
Philosopher
Quantum
Results
The Game I Play Is A Very Interesting One. It's Imagination In A Straightjacket, Which Is This: That It Has To Agree With The Known Laws Of Physics. ... It Requires Imagination To Think Of What's Possible, And Then It Requires An Analysis Back, Checking To See Whether It Fits, Whether Its Allowed, According To What's Known, Okay?
Science
Thinking
Law
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 Judgment In One Particular Direction Or Another.
Helping Others
Ideas
Giving
Unless A Thing Can Be Defined By Measurement, It Has No Place In A Theory. And Since An Accurate Value Of The Momentum Of A Localized Particle Cannot Be Defined By Measurement It Therefore Has No Place In The Theory.
Science
Momentum
Measurement
Some People Say, "how Can You Live Without Knowing?" I Do Not Know What They Mean. I Always Live Without Knowing. That Is Easy. How You Get To Know Is What I Want To Know.
Philosophy
Mean
Knowing
Everything Is Made Of Atoms.
Atoms
Made
The First Principle Is That You Must Not Fool Yourself And You Are The Easiest Person To Fool.
Clever
Love Life
Science
But There Is Nothing In Biology Yet Found That Indicates The Inevitability Of Death.
Inevitability Of Death
Biology
Found
It Is Our Responsibility To Leave The People Of The Future A Free Hand.
Responsibility
Hands
People
The Same Equations Have The Same Solutions
Equations
Solutions
There Is Nothing In Biology Yet Found That Indicates The Inevitability Of Death. This Suggests To Me That It Is Not At All Inevitable And That It Is Only A Matter Of Time Before Biologists Discover What It Is That Is Causing Us The Trouble.
Health
Inevitability Of Death
Matter
This Is The Key Of Modern Science And Is The Beginning Of The True Understanding Of Nature. This Idea. That To Look At The Things, To Record The Details, And To Hope That In The Information Thus Obtained, May Lie A Clue To One Or Another Of A Possible Theoretical Interpretation.
Lying
Keys
Ideas
Religion Is A Culture Of Faith; Science Is A Culture Of Doubt.
Philosophy
Science
Technology
I Don't Feel Frightened By Not Knowing Things, By Being Lost In The Mysterious Universe Without Any Purpose - Which Is The Way It Really Is, As Far As I Can Tell. Possibly. It Doesn't Frighten Me.
Death
Knowledge
Science
You Say You Are A Nameless Man. You Are Not To Your Wife And To Your Child. You Will Not Long Remain So To Your Immediate Colleagues If You Can Answer Their Simple Questions When They Come Into Your Office. You Are Not Nameless To Me. Do Not Remain Nameless To Yourself — It Is Too Sad A Way To Be. Know Your Place In The World And Evaluate Yourself Fairly, Not In Terms Of The Naïve Ideals Of Your Own Youth, Nor In Terms Of What You Erroneously Imagine Your Teacher's Ideals Are.
Teacher
Children
Simple
Words Can Be Meaningless. If They Are Used In Such A Way That No Sharp Conclusions Can Be Drawn.
Way
Used
Conclusion
Know How To Solve Every Problem That Has Been Solved.
Problem
Solve
Know How
In Fact The Total Amount That A Physicist Knows Is Very Little. He Has Only To Remember The Rules To Get Him From One Place To Another And He Is All Right.
Littles
Facts
Remember
It Is The Facts That Matter, Not The Proofs. Physics Can Progress Without The Proofs, But We Can't Go On Without The Facts ... If The Facts Are Right, Then The Proofs Are A Matter Of Playing Around With The Algebra Correctly.
Science
Progress
Goes On
Nature...cannot Be Fooled!
Fooled
Physics Is Not The Most Important Thing. Love Is.
Science
Technology
Love Is
There Are Theoretical Physicists Who Imagine, Deduce, And Guess At New Laws, But Do Not Experiment; And Then There Are Experimental Physicists Who Experiment, Imagine, Deduce, And Guess.
Law
Imagine
Physicist
To Test Whether You Have Learned An Idea Or A Definition, Rephrase What You Just Learned Without Using The New Word.
Ideas
Definitions
Tests
There Is A Computer Disease That Anybody Who Works With Computers Knows About. It's A Very Serious Disease And It Interferes Completely With The Work. The Trouble With Computers Is That You 'play' With Them!
Play
Disease
Serious
If All Of This, All The Life Of A Stream Of Water, Can Be Nothing But A Pile Of Atoms, How Much More Is Possible?
Water
Atoms
Streams
I Do Believe That There Is A Conflict Between Science And Religion ... The Spirit Or Attitude Toward The Facts Is Different In Religion From What It Is In Science. The Uncertainty That Is Necessary In Order To Appreciate Nature Is Not Easily Correlated With The Feeling Of Certainty In Faith.
Attitude
Believe
Order
It Requires A Much Higher Degree Of Imagination To Understand The Electromagnetic Field Than To Understand Invisible Angels. ... I Speak Of The E And B Fields And Wave My Arms And You May Imagine That I Can See Them ... [but] I Cannot Really Make A Picture That Is Even Nearly Like The True Waves.
Angel
Imagination
Degrees
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?
Artist
Past
Men
What Is The Fundamental Hypothesis Of Science, The Fundamental Philosophy? We Stated It In The First Chapter: The Sole Test Of The Validity Of Any Idea Is Experiment. ... If We Are Told That The Same Experiment Will Always Produce The Same Result, That Is All Very Well, But If When We Try It, It Does Not, Then It Does Not. We Just Have To Take What We See, And Then Formulate All The Rest Of Our Ideas In Terms Of Our Actual Experience.
Philosophy
Math
Ideas
If I Could Explain It To The Average Person, I Wouldn't Have Been Worth The Nobel Prize.
Average
Nobel
Persons
Turbulence Is The Most Important Unsolved Problem Of Classical Physics.
Important
Problem
Physics
If Science Is To Progress, What We Need Is The Ability To Experiment, Honesty In Reporting Results—the Results Must Be Reported Without Somebody Saying What They Would Like The Results To Have Been—and Finally—an Important Thing—the Intelligence To Interpret The Results.
Honesty
Intelligence
Important
What I Am Going To Tell You About Is What We Teach Our Physics Students In The Third Or Fourth Year Of Graduate School... It Is My Task To Convince You Not To Turn Away Because You Don't Understand It. You See My Physics Students Don't Understand It... That Is Because I Don't Understand It. Nobody Does.
Graduation
Learning
School
Everything We Know Is Only Some Kind Of Approximation, Because We Know That We Do Not Know All The Laws Yet. Therefore, Things Must Be Learned Only To Be Unlearned Again Or, More Likely, To Be Corrected.
Law
Kind
Skepticism
Observation, Reason, And Experiment Make Up What We Call The Scientific Method.
Scientific Method
Reason
Observation
[b]eyond Poverty, Beyond The Point That The Material Needs Are Reasonably Satisfied, Only From Within Is Peace.
Needs
Poverty
Satisfied
We Have Found It Of Paramount Importance That In Order To Progress, We Must Recognize Our Ignorance And Leave Room For Doubt.
Ignorance
Order
Doubt
It's Because Somebody Knows Something About It That We Can't Talk About Physics. It's The Things That Nobody Knows Anything About We Can Discuss.
Physics
Nobody Knows
Knows
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