My absolute hero is Richard Feynman. Required reading:

- "Surely You're Joking"

- "What Do You Care What Other People Think"

- http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm "Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle" (Challenger disaster report)

- Also, consider torrenting videos of his "Messenger Lectures". The youtube snippets do not nearly do them justice. They're some of the most intellectually interesting things you'll ever watch:

Richard_Feynman_Messenger_Lectures_at_Cornell_-_The.Character.of.Physical.Law_-_Part_1_The_Law_of_Gravitation

Part_2_The_Relation_of_Mathematics_to_Physics

Part_3_The_Great_Conservation_Principles

Part_4_Symmetry_in_Physical_Law

Part_5_The_Distinction_of_Past_and_Future

Part_6_Probability_and_Uncertainty

Part_7_Seeking_New_Laws

There's also a small series of Feynman that has been put on Youtube called "fun to imagine." They are short and most of them are very good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pYRn5j7oI

There's also a lovely three part series: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E

Richard Feynman's Messenger Lectures can be viewed here (Silverlight required):

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html