Richard Feynman Quotes

Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.

Richard Feynman

• Knowledge
• Instruction
• Enabling

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Quotes to Explore

• There never yet has been a country which became powerful without knowledge. A man by his own strength alone cannot successfully combat a tiger, but by his intelligence, he can devise means to entrap him.

  

  Zhang Zhidong
  • Country
  • Knowledge
  • Alone

• There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

  

  Napoleon Hill
  • Knowledge
  • Desire
  • Purpose

• The acquisition of knowledge - knowledge of both the world and of their own religion - will inoculate young people against extremist ideologies.

  

  Hamza Yusuf
  • People
  • World
  • Knowledge

• People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding.

  

  Van Wyck Brooks
  • People
  • Good
  • Small

• Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.

  

  Wendell Phillips
  • Knowledge
  • Lost
  • Grace

• Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

  

  Samuel Johnson
  • Great
  • Knowledge
  • Curiosity

• The properties which differentiate living matter from any kind of inorganic imitation may be instinctively felt, but can hardly be formulated without expert knowledge.

  

  Oliver Joseph Lodge
  • May
  • Knowledge
  • Kind

• I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.

  

  Daniel Alarcon
  • Great
  • Thinking
  • Country

• When an unbaked pot is broken, the potter can use the mud to make a new one; but when a baked one is broken, he cannot do the same any longer. So when a person dies in a state of ignorance, he is born again; but when he becomes well baked in the fire of true knowledge and dies a perfect man, he is not born again.

  

  Ramakrishna
  • True
  • Knowledge
  • Perfect

• Timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.

  

  Hippocrates
  • Knowledge
  • Opinion

• To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.

  

  Albert Schweitzer
  • Knowledge
  • Question
  • Optimistic

• There is no case where ignorance should be preferred to knowledge - especially if the knowledge is terrible.

  

  Edward Teller
  • Knowledge
  • Ignorance

• 'I insist that my positive knowledge, however small, is not to be set aside for the gentleman's ignorance, however great.'

  

  Leonard Bacon
  • Great
  • Small
  • Knowledge

• I've been teaching full-time for 41 years at small colleges, and I can't imagine what it would mean for me or my colleagues to be armed with handguns or rifles instead of books and a thorough knowledge of our chosen disciplines.

  

  Jay Parini
  • Time
  • Small
  • Knowledge

• 'Dogfight' was everything wonderful and terrifying about a show, and I feel it 1,000% gave me the knowledge and the confidence that I could do this. I can step up and be present enough to command scenes with amazing actors.

  

  Lindsay Mendez
  • Up
  • Knowledge
  • Amazing

• I do not want medical men to discuss whether or not my work is valuable, because I know what it will do. I want them to tell me how best this new knowledge of rapidly restoring paralysed people to health and strength can be applied where it is needed.

  

  Elizabeth Kenny
  • People
  • Work
  • Men

• The ocean is the last frontier of human empirical knowledge; even the contours on that eighth-grader's globe are the product of a mix of scientific measurement, inference and conjecture.

  

  Alan Huffman
  • Knowledge
  • Ocean

• The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.

  

  Freda Adler
  • Knowledge

• Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge.

  

  Ahmed Zewail
  • Knowledge

• Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

  

  Emil Cioran
  • Power
  • Knowledge

• If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.

  

  Dalai Lama
  • Mind
  • Real
  • May

• But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.

  

  Anthony Trollope
  • Up
  • She
  • Light

• Most difficult thing in the world, to write a play. Do you know the story of Shaw at the Fabian society? H.G. Welles said "I'm terribly sorry I've missed the last five meetings, I've been terribly busy, I'm engaged in writing a scientific pamphlet on the effects of radioactivity in 1984 and I've produced a novel, and various pieces of science fiction to do, and I've had a bit of personal trouble, and I had my copy to bring out for the newspaper." Shaw leapt up and said, "I've not missed one meeting, and I have written a play!" hardest thing in the world. If it were easy they'd all be at it.

  

  Peter O'Toole
  • World
  • Writing
  • Easy

• Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.

  

  Richard Feynman
  • Knowledge
  • Instruction
  • Enabling