"Maybe theoretical physics is degenerating but I don't know into what. Let me just say something first. I have noticed when I was younger, that lots of old men in the field couldn't understand new ideas very well, and resisted them with one method or another, and that they were very foolish in saying these ideas were wrong — such as Einstein not being able to take quantum mechanics. I'm an old man now, and these are new ideas, and they look crazy to me, and they look like they're on the wrong track. Now I know that other old men have been very foolish in saying things like this, and, therefore, I would be very foolish to say this is nonsense. I am going to be very foolish, because I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! I can't help it, even though I know the danger in such a point of view. So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Richard Feynman, interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Old_age
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Old age
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