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On the other hand, simplicity is a hallmark of brilliance.

"Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, 'Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.' Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, 'I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it.' But he came back a few days later to say, 'I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it.'"

— Goodstein & Goodstein, Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun (Norton, New York, 1996)



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