Richard Feynman Quotes
1. Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
2. Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.
3. Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
4. You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.
5. Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.
6. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
7. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
8. Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
9. The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
10. Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is.
11. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
12. I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
13. We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.
14. I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb.
15. If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.
16. 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. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
17. What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it… That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.
18. All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t,’ — which is just another way of saying that you can’t.
19. Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.
20. 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.
21. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
22. I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
23. 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.
24. Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
25. What I cannot create, I do not understand.
26. To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.
27. Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
28. I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys–but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
29. What Do You Care What Other People Think?
30. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
31. Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
32. People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way–in such a way that often nobody believes me!
33. I think nature’s imagination Is so much greater than man’s, she’s never going to let us relax
34. The first person you should be careful not to fool is yourself. Because you are the easiest person to fool
35. Mathematics is a language plus reasoning; it is like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.
36. Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.
37. There is no authority who decides what is a good idea.
38. Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
39. I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
40. Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.
41. In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.
42. I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.
43. I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.
44. Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough.
45. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
46. Nature has a great simplicity and therefore a great beauty
47. Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
48. 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.
49. I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
50. If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize.
51. We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries.
52. The game I play is a very interesting one. It’s imagination, in a tight straightjacket.
53. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
54. There’s a big difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
55. But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.
56. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.
57. I love to think. I once considered taking drugs as an attempt to better understand an altered state of mind; however, I decided not to. I didn’t want to chance ruining the machine.
58. Everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough
59. 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.
60. That’s the trouble with not being in your own field: You don’t take it seriously.
