Wit & Attitude Quote by Richard P. Feynman

Feynman’s line lands like a lab rule written in moral ink: the hardest thing in science isn’t mastering equations, it’s resisting the warm, self-authored story you want the data to tell. The brilliance is the reversal. We assume deception is something done by bad actors; Feynman insists the primary con artist is internal, efficient, and always on the job. “The easiest person to fool” isn’t an insult so much as a design spec of the human mind: we’re biased toward coherence, hungry for patterns, and allergic to admitting we might be wrong.

The intent is disciplinary, almost ascetic. Feynman isn’t praising skepticism as a personality trait; he’s prescribing it as a method. This comes straight out of his “cargo cult science” critique, where he warned against research that mimics the outer rituals of rigor while quietly dodging the inner obligation: to test your own favorite hypothesis as if you wanted it to fail. The subtext is that institutions, careers, and prestige make self-deception easier, not harder. When your identity is tied to being right, you’ll unconsciously curate evidence, soften inconvenient results, and confuse elegance for truth.

Stylistically, it works because it’s plainspoken and ruthless. No grand metaphysics, just a single, memorable imperative that re-centers integrity on the private moment before publication: what you allow yourself to believe. In an era of incentives, hot takes, and confirmation-by-algorithm, Feynman’s warning reads less like a scientist’s aphorism and more like a survival manual for thinking.