Richard Feynman Quotes
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.
Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it well enough.
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but to comprehend things which are.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.
It is no crime to be ignorant of physics, but it is a crime to be ignorant of the consequences of physics.
I am smart enough to know that I am dumb.
The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is.
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
The world looks so different after learning science. For example, trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into tree… and in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth, instead. These are beautiful things, and the content of science is wonderfully full of them.
I have this one little saying, when things get too heavy just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man.
The most important thing is not to stop questioning.
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
The question of importance is purely one of evolution: I am sure that there is some small connection between what is required to become a great physicist and what is needed to become a great musician.
The student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up.
It’s a wonderful thing to know that your future is in good hands -your own.
Anthropologists have often described how tribal societies were egalitarian. They didn’t have a state and they didn’t have a police force; they didn’t even have written law. But when they thought somebody was a witch, they burned him. And it’s The same today.
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
We make a lot of mistakes in the discovery process because discovery is not the same as logical deduction.
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
I am looking at a flower.. I see its complicated design, the beauty of its color, the exquisite scent. It is just too complex.
The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.
I have no fear of being wrong; therefore, I am open to learning from my mistakes.
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
The first step in learning is to realize how little you know.
What makes a quantum player…it’s that they are willing to keep playing with it even if the fun is a little hard.
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird.
If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don’t listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds. To him who is a discoverer in this field, the products of his imagination possess more value than the discoveries of any brainless empiricist.
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Human nature will always remain a mystery. What we do know is that you can understand anything if you learn to do it.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts but to discover new ways of thinking about them.
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is.
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.