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Who really said it

Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings

Not verified as Feynman — origin unknown Unknown No documented source before 2010 · Richard Feynman died 15 February 1988
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No recording, transcript, programme or published Feynman text containing this sentence has ever surfaced, and it is absent from Wikiquote’s sourced collection of his words. The earliest appearance anyone has located is an epigraph on the first page of a 2010 finance paper by Andrew W. Lo and Mark T. Mueller, credited there to “Richard Feynman, speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony” with no citation of any kind — twenty-two years after Feynman’s death. Later quotations of the line overwhelmingly trace back to that uncited epigraph, or cite nothing at all.

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings” widely credited to Richard Feynman, but unsourced. Its earliest known appearance in print is an uncited epigraph in Andrew W. Lo and Mark T. Mueller's paper "WARNING: Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Wealth!" (arXiv, 13 March 2010), twenty-two years after Feynman's death. No Feynman speech, book or recording containing the line has been found. Via Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Richard Feynman. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of knowledge, simplicity and creativity. Theme: "Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The earliest appearance anyone has found

Claimed source
“Speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony” — no date, programme, transcript or recording has ever been produced
Earliest located appearance
WARNING: Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Wealth!
Date
arXiv preprint, submitted 13 March 2010, by Andrew W. Lo and Mark T. Mueller
In Feynman’s own works
Not found — absent from Wikiquote’s sourced Feynman page and from his 1974 Caltech commencement address

Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings!
– Richard Feynman, speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony. Opening epigraph, page 1

This is the whole of the “source”: an epigraph standing above the paper’s first section, with no footnote, endnote or bibliographic reference. The sentence that follows it begins the authors’ own argument about the 2007–2009 financial crisis — nothing further is said about where Feynman supposedly spoke.

Lo & Mueller, “WARNING: Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Wealth!” (arXiv:1003.2688)

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s editors opened the question in 2016 and never closed it: the talk page for Richard Feynman ↗ records the suspicion that “all websites use exactly the same wording for the attribution,” and the conclusion that the first incidence of the quote is Lo’s 2010 paper, with all other authors, in that editor’s words, tending to “cite Lo or no-one.”
  • The paper itself confirms the shape of the problem. The full text of Lo and Mueller (2010) ↗ opens with the line as an epigraph credited to “Richard Feynman, speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony” — and gives no citation, footnote or date. The arXiv record ↗ dates the first version to 13 March 2010.
  • The obvious place to look is the obvious place it is not. Feynman’s best-known Caltech commencement address, “Cargo Cult Science,” delivered at the 1974 commencement ↗, mentions electrons exactly once — in connection with Millikan’s oil-drop measurement of their charge — and says nothing about them having feelings.
  • The dates do not leave much room. Feynman died on 15 February 1988 ↗; the earliest located printing of the sentence is twenty-two years later, in a finance paper that names no source for it.

No rights status can honestly be asserted, because no source work has been identified. If Feynman really said this at a Caltech ceremony, the wording would sit with his estate; if it originated with Lo and Mueller’s 2010 epigraph or with the Gell-Mann variant, it belongs to those authors and publishers. Since the origin is unknown, treat the line as unresolved rather than free to reuse — and note that neither candidate origin is old enough to be public domain in the United States.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually gets claimed here

Almost every element of the popular attribution is unsupported — the speaker, the occasion, and even which physicist is supposed to have said it. Here is what breaks down where.

Richard Feynman unsourced

The line is not in Feynman’s books, lectures or recorded talks, and Wikiquote’s sourced Feynman page ↗ — which catalogues his quotations work by work, from The Value of Science to Surely You’re Joking — does not contain it at all.

“Speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony” unverified

No date, programme, transcript or recording is ever given. Wikiquote’s editors were suspicious precisely because every site repeats that identical phrase word for word ↗ — the signature of a single uncited origin being copied, not of independent sourcing. Feynman’s best-known Caltech commencement address, “Cargo Cult Science” (1974) ↗, contains nothing like it.

Murray Gell-Mann also unverified

A very close variant — “Imagine how hard physics would be if electrons could think” — is credited to Gell-Mann, traced by Wikiquote’s editors ↗ to Scott E. Page’s 1999 article in Complexity, which cites Gell-Mann’s The Quark and the Jaguar (1994) without a page. An editor with access to the temporarily free online edition reported that a quick search of the book turned up no such sentence.

“feelings” / “emotions” / “could think” / “had human rights” drifting

An unsourced line has nothing to hold its shape. A Johns Hopkins economics lecture page repeats the Gell-Mann “could think” version and then proposes its own sharper variant ↗ — “imagine how hard experimental physics would be if electrons had human rights” — offered by the lecturer as an improvement, not credited to Gell-Mann. When a saying gets reworked that freely and no version carries a citation, that is a saying in circulation, not a quotation.

What can actually be documented: the sentence first appears in print as an uncited epigraph in Lo and Mueller’s 2010 paper ↗, twenty-two years after Feynman’s death. Everything earlier is assertion.

Context

Why this one spread

The sentence is a perfect little argument, which is most of why it travels: physics is tractable because its objects are indifferent, and economics is not because its objects are not. That is a real idea, and it is genuinely useful — but a good idea does not come with a speaker attached. It arrived in wide circulation already wearing Feynman’s name, and nobody stopped to ask who had checked.

The vector is unusually clean here. Lo and Mueller put the line at the head of a much-read paper about “physics envy” in finance, and finance writers picked it up from there — one blogger in 2014 openly says “I found this quote in” the Lo and Mueller paper ↗ before spending a post arguing that Feynman was wrong about a sentence there is no evidence Feynman said.

A witty line about physics sounds like Feynman whether or not he ever said it. That is the whole mechanism.

Other candidates that have been floated

The strongest rival credit is Murray Gell-Mann, for the near-identical “Imagine how hard physics would be if electrons could think.” That version is at least older in print — Wikiquote’s editors trace it to a 1999 article in the journal Complexity by Scott E. Page, which points to Gell-Mann’s 1994 book The Quark and the Jaguar without a page number. When the Santa Fe Institute Press briefly put that book online, an editor reported that a quick search of the text turned up no such line ↗. So the Gell-Mann version is better documented as a quotation and no better documented as a source.

One commenter on the Feynman talk page ↗ has suggested the economist Fritz Machlup’s 1969 essay “If matter could talk” (in Philosophy, Science and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel, pp. 309–32) as a possible ancestor of the thought. That is offered as speculation, and the same commenter notes they do not recall the essay mentioning feeling at all — so treat it as a lead, not a finding.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Knowledge Simplicity Creativity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote — Talk:Richard Feynmanen.wikiquote.org

The provenance thread: editors flag that every site repeats the same "Caltech graduation ceremony" wording, and identify Lo (2010) as the first known appearance.
Wikiquote — Talk:Murray Gell-Mannen.wikiquote.org

The rival credit: the "electrons could think" variant, its 1999 Complexity citation, and the failed full-text search of The Quark and the Jaguar.
Lo & Mueller, "Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Wealth!"arxiv.org

The 2010 paper whose opening epigraph is the earliest located appearance of the sentence; v1 submitted 13 March 2010.
Feynman, "Cargo Cult Science" (1974 Caltech commencement)calteches.library.caltech.edu

Feynman's best-known Caltech commencement address, in full. It mentions electrons only via Millikan's oil-drop experiment — no line about feelings.
Wikiquote — Richard Feynman (sourced quotations)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced Feynman collection, organised work by work. The phrase does not appear anywhere on it.
Chris Carroll, methodology lecture notesecon2.jhu.edu

A Johns Hopkins economics lecture page quoting Gell-Mann's "if electrons could think" and proposing its own variant, "if electrons had human rights" — the lecturer's coinage, not Gell-Mann's.

The credited speaker

The man it gets pinned on

Richard Feynman

1918–1988 · American theoretical physicist · Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965 · Caltech from 1952

Richard Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics and taught at Caltech from 1952 until his death in 1988. He was genuinely funny in print and on stage, which is exactly why he has become one of the internet’s most heavily counterfeited quotees: a clever one-liner about physics sounds like Feynman whether or not he ever said it. This particular line does not appear in his lectures, his books, or Wikiquote’s sourced page of his quotations.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented appearance

Earliest documented appearance: Andrew W. Lo and Mark T. Mueller, “WARNING: Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Wealth!” arXiv:1003.2688 (submitted 13 March 2010), opening epigraph — given there as “Richard Feynman, speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony,” with no citation. No source in Feynman’s own writings, lectures or recorded talks has been located.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/imagine-how-much-harder-physics-would-be-if-electrons-had/

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