Richard Feynman Quotes

283 Sourced Quotes

You see, the chemists have a complicated way of counting: instead of saying "one, two, three, four, five protons", they say, "hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron."

Richard Feynman
There are many, many aspects of the world that mathematics is unnecessary for, such as love, and which are very delightful and wonderful to appreciate and to feel awed and mysterious about.

Richard Feynman
There is nothing more exciting than the truth, the pay dirt of the scientist, discovered by his painstaking efforts.

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
Nature seems to keep piling on these particles [having the same properties but heavier masses] as if to drug us.

Richard Feynman
One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words, we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

Richard Feynman
"The exception proves that the rule is wrong." That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.

Richard Feynman
In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.

Richard Feynman
Some people believe that a theorem is proved when a logically correct proof is given; but some people believe a theorem is proved only when the student sees why it is inevitably true. The author tends to belong to this second school of thought.

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

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

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

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
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
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
Things happen faster in physics than in the book publishing business.

Richard Feynman
In those days, in Far Rockaway, there was a youth center for Jewish kids at the temple.... Somebody nominated me for president of the youth center. The elders began getting nervous, because I was an avowed atheist by that time.... I thought nature itself was so interesting that I didn't want it distorted like that. And so I gradually came to disbelieve the whole religion.

Richard Feynman
Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities.

Richard Feynman