Richard Feynman Quotes
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Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers... This is not yet a scientific age.
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If you don't like it, go somewhere else, to another universe where the rules are simpler.
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The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things.
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I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don't have to teach. Never.
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Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
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We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't know what you are talking about!" The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?"
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There’s so much distance between the fundamental rules and the final phenomenon, that it’s almost unbelievable that the final variety of phenomenon can come from such a steady operation of such simple rules.
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Any schemes - such as 'think of symmetry laws', or 'put the information in mathematical form', or 'guess equations'- are known to everybody now, and they are all tried all the time. When you are stuck, the answer cannot be one of these, because you will have tried these right away...The next scheme, the new discovery, is going to be made in a completely different way.
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To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can.
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So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
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We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work, although, there has been in these days, some interest in this kind of thing.
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Everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.
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I don't have to be good because they think I'm going to be good.
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A person talks in such generalities that everyone can understand him and it's considered to be some deep philosophy. However, I would like to be very rather more special and I would like to be understood in an honest way, rather than in a vague way.
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Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
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Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
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You should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist... . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, an integrity that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
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I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. ... There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
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There's plenty of room at the bottom.
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You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things... It doesn't frighten me.
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I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.
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I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
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But the real glory of science is that we can find a way of thinking such that the law is evident.
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You can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.