Mathematics is a language plus reasoning. It's like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.
Richard P. FeynmanI couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
Richard P. FeynmanMy 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.
Richard P. FeynmanWhen it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: "We *know* all that!" "Oh," I say, "you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.
Richard P. FeynmanWe have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work, although, there has been in these days, some interest in this kind of thing.
Richard P. Feynman