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Richard P. Feynman Quotes - Page 13

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The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from

The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate.

Richard P. Feynman
Clever, Self, Games
Richard P. Feynman (2014). “QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter”, p.128, Princeton University Press

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 P. Feynman
Believe, Teaching, Ideas
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.293, Princeton University Press

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.

Richard P. Feynman
Lying, Teaching, Views
"The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics". Richard P. Feynman's Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1965.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of stars-mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ...What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.

Richard P. Feynman
Stars, Past, Night

My friends and I had taken dancing lessons, although none of us would ever admit it. In those depression days, a friend of my mother was trying to make a living by teaching dancing in the evening, in an upstairs dance studio. There was a back door to the place, and she arranged it so the young men could come up through the back way without being seen.

Richard P. Feynman
Dance, Mother, Teaching

I think Nature's imagination is so much greater than man's, she's never gonna let us relax!

Richard P. Feynman
Men, Thinking, Imagination
"The Quotable Feynman".

This is the key of modern science and is the beginning of the true understanding of nature. This idea. That to look at the things, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained, may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation.

Richard P. Feynman
Lying, Keys, Ideas
"The Character of Physical Law". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1965.

There's plenty of room at the bottom.

Richard P. Feynman
Rooms, Bottom, Plenty
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.312, Princeton University Press

One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to do it.

Richard P. Feynman
Law, Understanding, Way

No! Not for a second! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.

Richard P. Feynman
Thinking, Nurse, Atheism

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 P. Feynman
Life, Thinking, Good Things
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.222, Princeton University Press

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

Richard P. Feynman
Thinking, People
"The Character of Physical Law". Book by Richard P. Feynman, Chapter 7, 'Seeking New Laws,' p. 165-166, 1965.

If all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible?

Richard P. Feynman
Water, Atoms, Streams
Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2013). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Desktop Edition Volume I”, Basic Books

The basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual... the humility of the spirit.

Richard P. Feynman
Humility, Pride, Men
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.120, Princeton University Press

When a Caltech student asked the eminent cosmologist Michael Turner what his "bias" was in favoring one or another particle as a likely candidate to compromise dark matter in the universe, Feynmann snapped, "Why do you want to know his bias? Form your own bias!"

Richard P. Feynman
Learning, Dark, Want

For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

Richard P. Feynman
Artist, Past, Men
Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2015). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat”, p.119, Basic Books

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 P. Feynman
Philosophy, Math, Ideas

We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.

Richard P. Feynman
Integrity, Missing, Research
"Cargo Cult Science". Richard P. Feynman's Caltech commencement address (1974), as quoted in "'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!': Adventures of a Curious Character" edited by Ralph Leighton (p. 342), calteches.library.caltech.edu. 1985.

From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.

Richard P. Feynman
Discovery, Views, Law
Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2015). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter”, p.71, Hachette UK

It is going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be analyzable with a finite number of logical operations. The present theory of physics is not that way, apparently. It allows space to go down into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed in infinite order, and so forth; and therefore, if this proposition [that physics is computer-simulatable] is right, physical law is wrong.

Richard P. Feynman
Distance, Science, Finite Number

As revealed by physics, the truth is so remarkable, so amazing!

Richard P. Feynman
Physics, Truth Is, Remarkable

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

Richard P. Feynman
Helping, Problem, Worthwhile
Richard P. Feynman's letter to Koichi Mano (February 3, 1966), as quoted in "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman" edited by Michelle Feynman and Timothy Ferris (pp. 198, 201), April 5, 2005; also quoted in "Wise Man" by Freeman Dyson, www.nybooks.com. October 20, 2005.

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.

Richard P. Feynman
Science, Momentum, Measurement
Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2013). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 3 for tablets”, Basic Books

Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Richard P. Feynman
Mean, Thinking, Effort
"The Character of Physical Law". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1965.

The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines. ... They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know.

Richard P. Feynman
Knowledge, Science, Imagination
Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2015). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter”, p.678, Basic Books

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