Wit & Attitude Quote by Richard P. Feynman

Reality has a mean streak: it keeps score whether or not you spin the story. Feynman’s line, delivered with his trademark impatience for self-deception, is less a cozy ode to “truth” than a warning shot at institutions that mistake messaging for mastery. Public relations is the polished surface; nature is the underlying machinery. You can buff the surface until it shines, but if the gears don’t mesh, the thing still breaks.

The sentence works because it’s built like an engineering constraint, not a moral sermon. “Must take precedence” isn’t advice; it’s a design requirement. And “cannot be fooled” gives nature an almost comic deadpan agency: the universe doesn’t care about your narrative, your prestige, your quarterly report, or your press conference. That little personification is the point. It exposes PR as theater performed for humans, while physics is the unbribable auditor.

Context matters: Feynman became a public avatar for scientific candor, most famously during the Challenger disaster investigation, when he punctured bureaucratic reassurance with a simple demonstration and a brutal conclusion about O-rings and cold temperatures. The subtext here is institutional: organizations tend to optimize for looking competent over being competent, especially when failure is costly and careers are on the line.

He’s also taking a swing at a subtler enemy: the PR we do to ourselves. The easiest person to fool is the one who benefits from being fooled. Nature doesn’t negotiate with that impulse; it simply delivers the test results.