Richard Feynman Quotes
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I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
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To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can.
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But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
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That is the logical tight-rope on which we have to walk if we wish to interpret nature.
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We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
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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.
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It requires a much higher degree of imagination to understand the electromagnetic field than to understand invisible angels. ... I speak of the E and B fields and wave my arms and you may imagine that I can see them ... but I cannot really make a picture that is even nearly like the true waves.
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We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.
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... it is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case.
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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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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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The chance is high that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But, on the off-chance that it is in another direction - a direction obvious from an unfashionable view of field theory - who will find it? Only someone who has sacrificed himself by teaching himself quantum electrodynamics from a peculiar and unusual point of view; one that he may have to invent for himself.
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If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.
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The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines. ... They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know.
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Science is what we do to keep us from lying to ourselves
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To not know math is a severe limitation to understanding the world.
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Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
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Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
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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 believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
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There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.
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There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time ... On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
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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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Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?"