Richard Feynman Quotes
-
Unless a thing can be defined by measurement, it has no place in a theory. And since an accurate value of the momentum of a localized particle cannot be defined by measurement it therefore has no place in the theory.
-
If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood .
-
I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics.
-
All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it.
-
... 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.
-
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
-
When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion... Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out how to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it... So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.
-
There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.
-
I learned a lot of different things from different schools. MIT is a very good place…. It has developed for itself a spirit, so that every member of the whole place thinks that it’s the most wonderful place in the world—it’s the center, somehow, of scientific and technological development in the United States, if not the world … and while you don’t get a good sense of proportion there, you do get an excellent sense of being with it and in it, and having motivation and desire to keep on
-
The world is a dynamic mess of jiggling things
-
I am a successful lecturer in physics for popular audiences. The real entertainment gimmick is the excitement, drama and mystery of the subject matter. People love to learn something, they are 'entertained' enormously by being allowed to understand a little bit of something they never understood before. One must have faith in the subject and in people's interest in it.
-
To not know math is a severe limitation to understanding the world.
-
Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
-
While I am describing to you how Nature works, you won't understand why Nature works that way. But you see, nobody understands that.
-
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.
-
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
-
If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.
-
Science is what we do to keep us from lying to ourselves
-
I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
-
Everything is made of atoms.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual... the humility of the spirit.
-
Nature has a great simplicity and therefore a great beauty.