Richard P. Feynman Quotes

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

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

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

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

A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!

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.

Since then I never pay attention to anything by "experts". I calculate everything myself.

I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians.

Don't worry about anything. Go out and have a good time.

Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this.

There's plenty of room at the bottom.

But the real glory of science is that we can find a way of thinking such that the law is evident.

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.

If a guy tells me the probability of failure is 1 in 100,000, I know he's full of crap.

All mass is interaction.

We've learned from experience that the truth will out.

Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.

I don't believe I can really do without teaching.

The Quantum Universe has a quotation from me in every chapter - but it's a damn good book anyway.

I don't have to be good because they think I'm going to be good.

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things.

If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.

The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination, in a tight straightjacket.

[B]eyond poverty, beyond the point that the material needs are reasonably satisfied, only from within is peace.

As usual, nature's imagination far surpasses our own, as we have seen from the other theories which are subtle and deep.

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.

I am not interested in what today's mathematicians find interesting.

Nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it's a wonderful problem, because it doesn't look so easy.

The same equations have the same solutions

What I can't create I don't understand

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

Strange! I don't understand how it is that we can write mathematical expressions and calculate what the thing is going to do without being able to picture it.

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.

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.

If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives.

Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.

I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.

Everybody who reasons carefully about anything is making a contribution ... and if you abstract it away and send it to the Department of Mathematics they put it in books.

Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory.

Experiment is the sole judge of the validity of any idea.

If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt. Don't ask why, or what difficulties you may get into.

Maybe that is why young people make success. They don't know enough.

There is enough energy in a single cubic meter of space to boil all the oceans in the world.

The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.

Nature has a great simplicity and therefore a great beauty.

An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!

Everything is made of atoms.

Nature's imagination far surpasses our own.