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A quote from Richard Feynman

January 19, 2007

And the next Monday, when they were all back at work, all the kids were playing in the field and one kid said to me, 'See that bird? What kind of a bird is that?' And I said that I didn't have the slightest idea what kind of a bird that is. He said it's a brown-throated thrush or something. He says, your father doesn't tell you anything. But it was the opposite. My father had taught me, looking at a bird he says, do you know what that bird is? It's a brown-throated thrush. But in Portuguese it's a Bom da Peida, in Italian a Chutto Lapittida. He says in Chinese it's a Chung-Iong-tah, in Japanese a Katano Takeda, et cetera. He says, you know in all the languages that you wanna know what the name of that bird is, and when you're finished with that, he says, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now, he says, let's look at the bird, and what it's doing.

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