Richard Feynman Quotes
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In any organization there ought to be the possibility of discussion... fence sitting is an art, and it's difficult, and it's important to do, rather than to go headlong in one direction or the other. It's just better to have action, isn't it than to sit on the fence? Not if you're not sure which way to go, it isn't.
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One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to do it.
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To guess what to keep and what to throw away takes considerable skill. Actually it is probably merely a matter of luck, but it looks as if it takes considerable skill.
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No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
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Thus we can get the correct answer for the probability of partial reflection by imagining (falsely) that all reflection comes from only the front and back surfaces. In this intuitively easy analysis, the 'front surface' and 'back surface' arrows are mathematical constructions that give us the right answer, whereas .... a more accurate representation of what is really going on: partial reflection is the scattering of light by electrons inside the glass.
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It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.
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I don't believe I can really do without teaching.
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I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS.
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Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.
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There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
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Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.
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Beyond poverty, beyond the point that the material needs are reasonably satisfied, only from within is peace.
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I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.
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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.
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All we know so far is what doesn't work.
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I have a limited intelligence and I've used it in a particular direction.
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Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it
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You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem. It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
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Do not read so much, look about you and think of what you see there.
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There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
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There are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess.
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Maybe that is why young people make success. They don't know enough.
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No! Not for a second! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.
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It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management.