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Kutta comments on No One Knows What Science Doesn't Know - Less Wrong
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Apparently the full quote from Richard Feynman is:
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
This was in 1965. Everett's first paper was in 1957 IIRC. So not only was Feynman mistaken about nobody at that time understanding quantum mechanics, but he thought this could be said safely? When there are billions of people in the world, and all ignorance and confusion is a property of the map rather than the territory?
Feynman was one of the great Traditional Rationalists, but sometimes he really does manage to get it completely wrong. Einstein was much worse in the same department: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother"!?
I think it's likely that both quotes were unrepresentative passages or insignificant slips of tongue that only got magnified and entrenched in people's minds after years of memetic selection. It's obvious that Einstein couldn't have meant the grandmother quote seriously, also, Einstein is known to be very prone to rampant misquotation. The grandmother quote is quite comforting to the layman, even if untrue, and sounds "deep" enough, likewise the Feynman quote raises the status of confused non-physicists and physicists alike, because "not even the pros get it, and it's allowed to not get it."