Richard Feynman Quotes
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Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
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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!
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Since then I never pay attention to anything by "experts". I calculate everything myself.
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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.
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But logic is not all, one needs one's heart to follow an idea.
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First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.
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If you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid - not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
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Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question - to doubt - to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.
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The beauty that is there is also available for me, too. But I see a deeper beauty that isn't so readily available to others.... I don't see how studying a flower ever detracts from its beauty. It only adds
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If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions - for the fun of it - then one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one! And that's the way to become a computer scientist.
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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.
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I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
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Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.
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What Do You Care What Other People Think?
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I have a limited intelligence and I've used it in a particular direction.
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No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.
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The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
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To test whether you have learned an idea or a definition, rephrase what you just learned without using the new word.
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You do not know anything until you have practiced.
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No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
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Some things that satisfy the rules of algebra can be interesting to mathematicians even though they don't always represent a real situation.
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If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend,' I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend.
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It is impossible, by the way, when picking one example of anything, to avoid picking one which is atypical in some sense.
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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!