Richard P. Feynman Quotes

Today's brains are yesterday's mashed potatoes.

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

I have to disregard everybody else, and then I can do my own work.

One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words, we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.

Although it is uncertain, it is necessary to make science useful. Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done; it is not good if it only tells you what just went on.

It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.

[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.

Some people think Wheeler's gotten crazy in his later years, but he's always been crazy.

Turbulence is the most important unsolved problem of classical physics.

If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.

It turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.

Experiment is the sole judge of the validity of any idea.

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.

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.

We have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know.

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

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

We need to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed. It's OK to say, "I don't know."

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

It is simple, therefore it is beautiful

It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.

Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion

This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore.

Science is of value because it can produce something.

We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!

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.

I learned a lot of different things from different schools. MIT is a very good place…. It has developed for itself a spirit, so that every member of the whole place thinks that it’s the most wonderful place in the world—it’s the center, somehow, of scientific and technological development in the United States, if not the world … and while you don’t get a good sense of proportion there, you do get an excellent sense of being with it and in it, and having motivation and desire to keep on

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

To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can.

The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination in a straightjacket, which is this: that it has to agree with the known laws of physics. ... It requires imagination to think of what's possible, and then it requires an analysis back, checking to see whether it fits, whether its allowed, according to what's known, okay?

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

To test whether you have learned an idea or a definition, rephrase what you just learned without using the new word.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of stars-mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ...What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.

What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. ... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

It is the fact that the electrons cannot all get on top of each other that makes tables and everything else solid.

All things are made of atoms - little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and 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.

To decide upon the answer is not scientific. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar ajar only.

There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

A great deal more is known than has been proved.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

Science is a way for us to not fool ourselves.

I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.