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Richard P. Feynman Quotes - Page 5

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A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.

A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.

Richard P. Feynman
Doubt, Progress, Rooms

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.

Richard P. Feynman
Real, Science, Imagination
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.87, Princeton University Press

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

Richard P. Feynman
Learning, Science, Doors
"What Do You Care What Other People Think?". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1988.

I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. [...] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

Richard P. Feynman
Beautiful, Philosophy, Flower
"What Do You Care What Other People Think?". Book by Richard P. Feynman, "The Making of a Scientist," p. 11, 1988.

The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory , you must try to explain what's good and what's bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty .

Richard P. Feynman
Honesty, Integrity, Real
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.127, Princeton University Press

If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations.

Richard P. Feynman
Generations, Demand, Want
"The Power of Doubt" by Christopher B. Nelson, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 4, 2014.

Whenever you see a sweeping statement that a tremendous amount can come from a very small number of assumptions, you always find that it is false. There are usually a large number of implied assumptions that are far from obvious if you think about them sufficiently carefully.

Richard P. Feynman
Thinking, Small Numbers, Assumption
"The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1964.

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.

Richard P. Feynman
Freedom, Philosophy, Responsibility
"The Value of Science". Public address at the National Academy of Sciences, published in "What Do You Care What Other People Think" (1988), Autumn 1955.

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

Richard P. Feynman
Graduation, Learning, School
Richard P. Feynman (2014). “QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter”, p.9, Princeton University Press

Science is uncertain.

Richard P. Feynman
Uncertain

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language.

Richard P. Feynman
Learning, Language, Problem
"New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics". Richard P. Feynman, "Engineering and Science", Volume 28, No. 6, March 1965.

The electron is a theory. But the theory is so good we can almost consider them real.

Richard P. Feynman
Real, Theory, Electrons

Science is a process for learning about nature in which competing ideas about how the world works are measured against observations.

Richard P. Feynman
Ideas, World, Process

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

Richard P. Feynman
Science, Math, Simple
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.45, Basic Books

We find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known with different degrees of certainty: "It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true".

Richard P. Feynman
Humility, Curiosity, Degrees

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

Richard P. Feynman
Inspirational, Responsibility, Science
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.359, Princeton University Press

If all of mathematics disappeared, physics would be set back by exactly one week.

Richard P. Feynman
Would Be, Physics, Week

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things.

Richard P. Feynman
Mysterious Universe, Knowing, Frightened
"No Ordinary Genius". Book by Christopher Sykes (p. 239), 1994.

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 P. Feynman
Inspirational, People, Understanding
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.301, Princeton University Press

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.

Richard P. Feynman
Heart, Reality, Luck
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.122, Princeton University Press

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 P. Feynman
Attitude, Believe, Order

Few people realize the number of things that are possible.

Richard P. Feynman
Numbers, People, Realizing

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

Richard P. Feynman
Stupid, Believe, Guy
Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.290, Princeton University Press

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Richard P. Feynman
Stars, Learning, Science
"Richard P. Feynman, Teacher". David L. Goodstein, "Physics Today", Volume 42, No. 2, February 1989.

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 P. Feynman
Way, Another Way

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