Richard Feynman Quotes
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Science is what we do to keep us from lying to ourselves
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So this piece of dirt waits four and a half billion years and evolves and changes, and now a strange creature stands here with instruments and talks to the strange creatures in the audience. What a wonderful world!
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Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.
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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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I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.
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I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.
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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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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?"
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The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.
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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... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
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As revealed by physics, the truth is so remarkable, so amazing!
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Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools-guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus-THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
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Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
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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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To not know math is a severe limitation to understanding the world.
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If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
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Mathematics is not just a language. Mathematics is a language plus reasoning.
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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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Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory.
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We need to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed. It's OK to say, "I don't know."
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It is simple, therefore it is beautiful
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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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The work I have done has, already, been adequately rewarded and recognized. Imagination reaches out repeatedly trying to achieve some higher level of understanding, until suddenly I find myself momentarily alone before one new corner of nature's pattern of beauty and true majesty revealed. That was my reward.
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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.