Richard Feynman Quotes

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

— Richard Feynman

“I ... a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.”

— Richard Feynman

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

— Richard Feynman

“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”

— Richard Feynman

If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.

— Richard Feynman

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain ... In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”

— Richard Feynman

“It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”

— Richard Feynman

“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.”

— Richard Feynman

“When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: "We *know* all that!"
"Oh," I say, "you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.”

— Richard Feynman

“Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”

— Richard Feynman

“I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys
but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!”

— Richard Feynman

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

— Richard Feynman

“(Joan,1941) She wrote me a letter asking,"How can I read it?,Its so hard." I told her to start at the beginning and read as far as you can get until you're lost. Then start again at the beginning and keep working through until you can understand the whole book. And thats what she did”

— Richard Feynman

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”

— Richard Feynman

“What do I advise? Forget it all. Don't be afraid. Do what you get the most pleasure from. Is it to build a cloud chamber? Then go on doing things like that. Develop your talents wherever they may lead. Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!
If you have any talent,or any occupation that delights you,do it, and do it to the hilt”

— Richard Feynman

“Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.”

— Richard Feynman

“Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science - for to fill your heart with love is enough.”

— Richard Feynman

“You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.”

— Richard Feynman

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified - how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.”

— Richard Feynman

“We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imagining of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck-half of us upside down-by a mysterious attraction, to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years, than to be carried on the back of an elephant supported on a tortoise swimming in a bottomless sea.”

— Richard Feynman

“It doesn't make a difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn't make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.”

— Richard Feynman

“You have to have absolute confidence. Keep right on going, and nothing will happen.”

— Richard Feynman

To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.

— Richard Feynman

There are thousands of years in the past, and there is an unknown amount of time in the future. There are all kinds of opportunities, and there are all kinds of dangers.

— Richard Feynman

“We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers ... one saying to the other: you don't know what you are talking about! The second one says: what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?”

— Richard Feynman

“The only thing that can be predicted is the probability of different events.”

— Richard Feynman

“Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can-if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong-to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.”

— Richard Feynman

I think we should teach them [the people] wonders and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more.

— Richard Feynman

“After reading the salary, I've decided that I must refuse. The reason I have to refuse a salary like that is I would be able to do what I've always wanted to do- -get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things.. With the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would happen to me. I'd worry about her, what she's doing; I'd get into arguments when I come home, and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn't be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess! What I've always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I've decided that I can't accept your offer.”

— Richard Feynman

“It was thought in the Middle Ages that people simply make many observations, and the observations themselves suggest the laws. But it does not work that way. It takes much more imagination than that.So the next thing we have to talk about is where the new ideas come from. Actually, it does not make any difference, as long as they come.”

— Richard Feynman

“If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror.”

— Richard Feynman

“There were a lot of fools at that conference-pompous fools-and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out.”

— Richard Feynman

How much do you value life?" "Sixty-four.

— Richard Feynman

There is a physical problem that is common to many fields, that is very old, and that has not been solved. It is not the problem of finding new fundamental particles, but something left over from a long time ago-over a hundred years. Nobody in physics has really been able to analyze it mathematically satisfactorily in spite of its importance to the sister sciences. It is the analysis of circulating or turbulent fluids.

— Richard Feynman

“I won't have anything to do with the Nobel Prize ... it's a pain in the ... (LAUGHS). I don't like honors.”

— Richard Feynman

“There was an interesting early relationship between physics and biology in which biology helped physics in the discovery of the conservation of energy, which was first demonstrated by Mayer in connection with the amount of heat taken in and given out by a living creature.”

— Richard Feynman

“I said, There's a long tradition behind life in India that comes from a religion and philosophy that is thousands of years old. And although these people are not in India, they still pass on those traditions about what's important in life-trying to build for the future and supporting their children in the effort-which have come down to them for centuries.”

— Richard Feynman

“Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics? No, I'm not. I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it; that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is ... My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world.”

— Richard Feynman

“The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy his own taxicab, and really do well.
I felt very sorry. I told him that betting on the horses was a bad idea, but he insisted it was the only way he could do it. He had such good intentions, but his method was going to be luck.
I wasn't going to go on philosophizing, so he took me to a place where there was a steel band playing some great calypso music, and I had an enjoyable afternoon.”

— Richard Feynman

“So we see that what looks like a dead, uninteresting thing-a glass of water with a cover, that has been sitting there for perhaps twenty years-really contains a dynamic and interesting phenomenon which is going on all the time. To”

— Richard Feynman

To our eyes, our crude eyes, nothing is changing, but if we could see it a billion times magnified, we would see that from its own point of view it is always changing: molecules are leaving the surface, molecules are coming back.

— Richard Feynman

“Why do we see no change? Because just as many molecules are leaving as are coming back! In the long run "nothing happens." If we then take the top of the vessel off and blow the moist air away, replacing it with dry air, then the number of molecules leaving is just the same as it was before, because this depends on the jiggling of the water, but the number coming back is greatly reduced because there are so many fewer water molecules above the water. Therefore”

— Richard Feynman

“Now that I am burned out and I'll never
accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching
classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for
pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without
worrying about any importance whatsoever.”

— Richard Feynman

How do we know that there are atoms? By one of the tricks mentioned earlier: we make the hypothesis that there are atoms, and one after the other results come out the way we predict, as they ought to if things are made of atoms. There is also somewhat more direct evidence, a good example of which is the following: The

— Richard Feynman

“There are other conservation laws. They are not as interesting as those I have described, and do not deal exactly with the conservation of numbers. Suppose”

— Richard Feynman

“I USED to cross the United States in my automobile every summer, trying to make it to the Pacific Ocean. But, for various reasons, I would always get stuck somewhere-usually in Las Vegas.”

— Richard Feynman

“The price of gaining such an accurate theory has been the erosion of our common sense.”

— Richard Feynman

“There is also a rhythm and a pattern between the phenomena of nature which is not apparent to the eye, but only to the eye of analysis; and it is these rhythms and patterns which we call Physical Laws. What”

— Richard Feynman

“If we were not able or did not desire to look in any new direction, if we did not have a doubt or recognize ignorance, we would not get any new ideas.”

— Richard Feynman

If a piece of steel or a piece of salt, consisting of atoms one next to the other, can have such interesting properties; if water-which is nothing but these little blobs, mile upon mile of the same thing over the earth-can form waves and foam, and make rushing noises and strange patterns as it runs over cement; if all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible? If

— Richard Feynman