Richard Feynman Quotes

283 Sourced Quotes

The fact that there are rules at all to be checked is a kind of miracle; that it is possible to find a rule, like the inverse square law of gravitation, is some sort of miracle. It is not understood at all, but it leads to the possibility of prediction — that means it tells you what you would expect to happen in an experiment you have not yet done.

Richard Feynman
When the scientist tells you he does not know the answer, his is an ignorant man. When he tells you he has a hunch about how it is going to work, he is uncertain about it. When he is pretty sure of how it is going to work, and he tells you, "This is the way it's going to work, I'll bet," he is still in some doubt.

Richard Feynman
I do believe that there is a conflict between science and religion... the spirit or attitude toward the facts is different in religion from what it is in science. The uncertainty that is necessary in order to appreciate nature is not easily correlated with the feeling of certainty in faith.

Richard Feynman
All science is intelligent inference; excessive literalism is a delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence.

Richard Feynman
With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries — certainly a grand adventure.

Richard Feynman
When I see equations, I see the letters in colors — I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Ernde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

Richard Feynman
There's so much distance between the fundamental rules and the final phenomenon, that it's almost unbelievable that the final variety of phenomenon can come from such a steady operation of such simple rules.

Richard Feynman
If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar - ajar only.

Richard Feynman
People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail.

Richard Feynman
We decided that "trivial" means "proved." So we joked with the mathematicians: "We have a new theorem — that mathematicians can prove only trivial theorems, because every theorem that's proved is trivial."

Richard Feynman
Just as a poet often has license from the rules of grammar and pronunciation, we should like to ask for 'physicists' license from the rules of mathematics in order to express what we wish to say in as simple a manner as possible.

Richard Feynman
A great deal more can be known than can be proved.

Richard Feynman
There is no authority who decides what is a good idea. We have lost the need to go to an authority to find out whether an idea is true or not. We can read an authority and let him suggest something; we can try it out and find out if it is true or not. If it is not true, so much the worse — so the "authorities" lose some of their functions.

Richard Feynman
Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question - to doubt - to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

Richard Feynman
I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don't have to teach. Never.

Richard Feynman
There are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess.

Richard Feynman
I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS.

Richard Feynman
There are the rushing waves... mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business... trillions apart... yet forming white surf in unison.

Richard Feynman
What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.

Richard Feynman
The proteins of bacteria and the proteins of humans are the same. In fact it has recently been found that the protein-making machinery in the bacteria can be given orders from the red cells to produce red cell proteins. So close is life to life.

Richard Feynman
It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is.

Richard Feynman
I don't believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting anywhere, I can say to myself, "At least I'm living; at least I'm doing something. I'm making some contribution." It's just psychological.

Richard Feynman
Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.

Richard Feynman
Knowledge is of no real value if all you can tell me is what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow if you do something.... You must be willing to stick your neck out.

Richard Feynman
We must, incidentally, make it clear from the beginning that if a thing is not a science, it is not necessarily bad. For example, love is not a science. So, if something is said not to be a science, it does not mean that there is something wrong with it; it just means that it is not a science.

Richard Feynman
In its efforts to learn as much as possible about nature, modern physics has found that certain things can never be "known" with certainty. Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.

Richard Feynman
The other thing that gives a scientific man the creeps in the world today are the methods of choosing leaders - in every nation. Today, for example, in the United States, the two political parties have decided to employ public relations men, that is, advertising men, who are trained in the necessary methods of telling the truth or lying in order to develop a product.

Richard Feynman
It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.

Richard Feynman
A philosopher once said "It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results." Well, they do not.

Richard Feynman
Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.

Richard Feynman