by ·

Richard Feynman Quotes | Quotes said by Richard Feynman

  • Richard Feynman Quote #1

    [Doubt] is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas bought in - a trial-and-error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar...doubt is not to be feared, but welcomed and discussed.


  • Richard Feynman Quote #2

    [Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #3

    …the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #4

    A few years after I gave some lectures for the freshmen at Caltech (which were published as the Feynman Lectures on Physics), I received a long letter from a feminist group. I was accused of being anti-women because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There's a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop's definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the women look stupid.

    The other story they objected to was told by the great astronomer Arthur Eddington, who had just figured out that the stars get their power from burning hydrogen in a nuclear reaction producing helium. He recounted how, on the night after his discovery, he was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend. She said, Look how pretty the stars shine! To which he replied, Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows how they shine. He was describing a kind of wonderful loneliness you have when you make a discovery.

    The letter claimed that I was saying a women is incapable of understanding nuclear reactions.

    I figured there was no point in trying to answer their accusations in detail, so I wrote a short letter back to them: Don't bug me, Man!

  • Richard Feynman Quote #5

    A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #6

    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.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #7

    But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #8

    CURIOSITY DEMANDS THAT WE ASK QUESTIONS,
    THAT WE TRY TO PUT THINGS TOGETHER AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND THIS MULTITUDE OF ASPECTS
    AS PERHAPS RESULTING FROM THE ACTION OF A RELATIVELY SMALL NUMBER OF ELEMENTAL
    THINGS AND FORCES ACTING IN AN INFINITE VARIETY OF COMBINATIONS

  • Richard Feynman Quote #9

    Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #10

    Electrons, when they were first discovered, behaved exactly like particles or bullets, very simply. Further research showed, from electron diffraction experiments for example, that they behaved like waves. As time went on there was a growing confusion about how these things really behaved ---- waves or particles, particles or waves? Everything looked like both.

    This growing confusion was resolved in 1925 or 1926 with the advent of the correct equations for quantum mechanics. Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimitable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have seen before. Your experience with things that you have seen before is incomplete. The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply different. An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with little planets going around in orbits. Nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have seen before.

    There is one simplication at least. Electrons behave in this respect in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly in the same way….

    The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, But how can it be like that? which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. I will not describe it in terms of an analogy with something familiar; I will simply describe it. 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. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possible avoid it, But how can it be like that? because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #11

    First of all there is matter—and, remarkably enough, all matter is the same. The matter of which the stars are made is known to be the same as the matter on the earth...The same kinds of atoms appear to be in living creatures as in non-living creatures.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #12

    For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #13

    I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #14

    I believe, therefore, that although it is not the case today, that there may some day come a time, I should hope, when it will fully appreciated that the power of governments should be limited; that governments ought not to be empowered to decide the validity of scientific theories, that this is a ridiculous thing for them to try to do; that they are not to decide the description of history or of economic theory or of philosophy.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #15

    I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #16

    I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!

  • Richard Feynman Quote #17

    I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

  • Richard Feynman Quote #18

    I don't mind not knowing. It doesn't scare me.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #19

    I happen to know this, and I happen to know that, and maybe I know that;and I work everything out from there. Tomorrow I may forgot that this is true, but remember that something else is true, so I can reconstruct it all again. I am never quite sure of where I am supposed to begin or where I am supposed to end. I just remember enough all the time so that as the memory fades and some of the pieces fall out I can put the thing back together again every day

  • Richard Feynman Quote #20

    I happen to know this, and I happen to know that, and maybe I know that;and I work everything out from there. Tomorrow I may forgot that this is true, but remember that something else is true, so I can reconstruct it all again. I am never quite sure of where I am supposed to begin or where I am supposed to end. I just remember enough all the time so that as the memory fades and some of the pieces fall out I can put the thing back together again every day.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #21

    I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say look how beautiful it is, and I'll agree. Then he says I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing, and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #22

    I have no responsibility to live up to what others expect of me. That's their mistake, not my failing.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #23

    I learned from her that every woman is worried
    about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #24

    I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #25

    I suddenly remembered that Murray Gell-Mann and I were supposed to give talks at that conference on the present situation of high-energy physics. My talk was set for the plenary session, so I asked the guide, Sir, where would the talks for the plenary session of the conference be?

    Back in that room that we just came through.

    Oh! I said in delight. Then I'm gonna give a speech in that room!

    The guide looked down at my dirty pants and my sloppy shirt. I realized how dumb that remark must have sounded to him, but it was genuine surprise and delight on my part.

    We went along a little bit farther, and the guide said, This is a lounge for the various delegates, where they often hold informal discussions. They were some small, square windows in the doors to the lounge that you could look through, so people looked in. There were a few men sitting there talking.

    I looked through the windows and saw Igor Tamm, a physicist from Russia that I know. Oh! I said. I know that guy! and I started through the door.

    The guide screamed, No, no! Don't go in there! By this time he was sure he had a maniac on his hands, but he couldn't chase me because he wasn't allowed to go through the door himself!

  • Richard Feynman Quote #26

    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.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #27

    I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.

  • Richard Feynman Quote #28

    I think nature's imagination Is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax

  • Richard Feynman Quote #29

    I took a little walk outside for a while. I was surprised that I wasn't feeling what I thought people were supposed to feel under the circumstances. May be I was fooling myself. I wasn't delighted, but I didn't feel terribly upset, perhaps because we had known for a long time that it was going to happen.

    It's hard to explain. If a Martian(who, we'll imagine never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures-these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come--it would look to hi like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.

    The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference--the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years. But that's crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?--all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life..

    We had a hell of good time together...

  • Richard Feynman Quote #30

    I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

You May Also Like

Recent Posts

Related Posts

0 comments:

Post a Comment