Richard Feynman Quotes: 21

• Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

• Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

• I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

• The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

• Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.

• Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

• 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.

  QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

• We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

• If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.

• You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.

• 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.

  Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

• For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

• 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.

• Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.

• Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

• I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!

  Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

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

• [Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.

• Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

• I have no responsibility to live up to what others expect of me. That's their mistake, not my failing.

• If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world.