Richard Feynman (Physicist)

There was no way, without full understanding, that one could have confidence that conditions the next time might not produce erosion three times more severe than the time before. Nevertheless, officials fooled themselves into thinking they had such understanding and confidence, in spite of the peculiar variations from case to case. A mathematical model was made to calculate erosion. This was a model based not on physical understanding but on empirical curve fitting.

— Richard Feynman time

Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.For a successful ,must take precedence over public relations, forcannot be fooled.

— Richard Feynman success

There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from aof , which only adds to the excitement andand awe of a .

— Richard Feynman men

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to , we must recognize ourand leave room for .

— Richard Feynman

I have awho's an , and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up aand say, "Look howit 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 , 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 aof , which only adds to the excitement andand awe of a . It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

— Richard Feynman time

[Doubting the great Descartes] was a reaction I learned from my father: Have no respect whatsoever for ; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?"

— Richard Feynman art

In particular, she had a wonderful sense of , and I learned from her that the highest forms ofwe can achieve areand human .

— Richard Feynman art

The real question ofversus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be . But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government— and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.

— Richard Feynman men

Is no one inspired by our present picture of the ? Thisofremains unsung by , you are reduced to hearing not aor , but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.

— Richard Feynman age

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 , you must try to explain what’sand what’sabout it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standardand .

— Richard Feynman success

We are at the veryoffor therace. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with . But there are tens of thousands of years in the . Ouris to do what we can,what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

— Richard Feynman reason

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!

— Richard Feynman art

If an apple was magnified to the size of the , then thein the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.

— Richard Feynman

"Incidentally, psycho-analysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease - lots of different "spirits" etc. The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air ; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria. So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment... (page 63)

— Richard Feynman knowledge

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (1999)A collection of three guest lectures Feynman gave at the University of Washington.

— Richard Feynman man

Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.

— Richard Feynman people

If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man.

— Richard Feynman man

It's a great game to look at the past, at an unscientific era, look at something there, and say have we got the same thing now, and where is it? So I would like to amuse myself with this game. First, we take witch doctors. The witch doctor says he knows how to cure. There are spirits inside which are trying to get out. ... Put a snakeskin on and take quinine from the bark of a tree. The quinine works. He doesn't know he's got the wrong theory of what happens. If I'm in the tribe and I'm sick, I go to the witch doctor. He knows more about it than anyone else. But I keep trying to tell him he doesn't know what he's doing and that someday when people investigate the thing freely and get free of all his complicated ideas they'll learn much better ways of doing it. Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, of course.

— Richard Feynman people

The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But "prove" used in this way really means "test," in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, "The exception tests the rule." Or, put another way, "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 truth

I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, and what I am going to emphasize is only an intellectual thing. I don't want to talk about everything at the same time. Let's take a small piece, an intellectual thing.No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.

— Richard Feynman truth

The first ... has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether what he says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask him intelligent questions — then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man.

— Richard Feynman man

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

— Richard Feynman faith

The fact that you are not sure means that it is possible that there is another way someday.

— Richard Feynman you

If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell "friend," I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend.

— Richard Feynman you

I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

— Richard Feynman you

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out : The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman, edited by Jeffery Robbins

— Richard Feynman man

I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.

— Richard Feynman belief

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

— Richard Feynman self

Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation ... Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

— Richard Feynman science

The remark which I read somewhere, that science is all right as long as it doesn't attack religion, was the clue I needed to understand the problem. As long as it doesn't attack religion it need not be paid attention to and nobody has to learn anything. So it can be cut off from society except for its applications, and thus be isolated. And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit. So I suggest, maybe correctly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite.

— Richard Feynman religion

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

— Richard Feynman knowledge

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing. Pure mathematics is just an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.

— Richard Feynman world

We are not to tell nature what she’s gotta be.

— Richard Feynman nature

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations.

— Richard Feynman success

The theory of quantum electrodynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you accept Nature as She is — absurd.p. 10

— Richard Feynman hope

Doubting the great Descarteswas a reaction I learned from my father: Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, Is it reasonable?What Do You Care What Other People Think?, p. 28-29

— Richard Feynman art

Some people say, How can you live without knowing? I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.lecture I: The Uncertainty of Science

— Richard Feynman science

The next question was — what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward.chapter 1, “The Law of Gravitation,” p. 18: video

— Richard Feynman truth

This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: Theres a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!Part 5: The World of One Physicist, Is Electricity Fire?, p. 283

— Richard Feynman art

And this is medicine?Comment to psychiatrist who examines Feynman and states he the psychiatrist has studied medicine. Part 3: Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military, Uncle Sam Doesnt Need You, p. 159

— Richard Feynman art

Every instrument that has been designed to be sensitive enough to detect weak light has always ended up discovering that the same thing: light is made of particles.p. 15

— Richard Feynman art

I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, and what I am going to emphasize is only an intellectual thing. I dont want to talk about everything at the same time. Lets take a small piece, an intellectual thing. No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.lecture II: The Uncertainty of Values

— Richard Feynman truth

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesnt get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.lecture II: The Uncertainty of Values

— Richard Feynman hope

Now we have a problem. We can deduce, often, from one part of physics like the law of gravitation, a principle which turns out to be much more valid than the derivation. This doesnt happen in mathematics, that the theorems come out in places where theyre not supposed to be!chapter 2, “The Relation of Mathematics to Physics” referring to the law of conservation of angular momentum

— Richard Feynman art

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is mere. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! 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?volume I; lecture 3, The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences; section 3-4, Astronomy; p. 3-6

— Richard Feynman truth

Since then I never pay attention to anything by experts. I calculate everything myself.After having been led astray on neutron-proton coupling by reports of beta-decay experts. Part 5: The World of One Physicist, The 7 Percent Solution, p. 255

— Richard Feynman art

The first one has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether what he says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask him intelligent questions — that is, penetrating, interested, honest, frank, direct questions on the subject, and no trick questions — then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesnt know the answer, if he is an honest man.lecture III: This Unscientific Age

— Richard Feynman man

The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But prove used in this way really means test, in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, The exception tests the rule. Or, put another way, 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.lecture I: The Uncertainty of Science

— Richard Feynman truth

There are many interesting phenomenawhich involve a mixture of physical phenomena and physiological processes, and the full appreciation of natural phenomena, as we see them, must go beyond physics in the usual sense. We make no apologies for making these excursions into other fields, because the separation of fields, as we have emphasized, is merely a human convenience, and an unnatural thing. Nature is not interested in our separations, and many of the interesting phenomena bridge the gaps between fields.volume I; lecture 35, Color Vision; 35-1 The human eye; p. 35-1

— Richard Feynman nature

Therefore psychologically we must keep all the theories in our heads, and every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics.chapter 7, “Seeking New Laws,” p. 168

— Richard Feynman good

volume II; lecture 1, Electromagnetism; section 1-6, Electromagnetism in science and technology; p. 1-11

— Richard Feynman science

While I am describing to you how Nature works, you wont understand why Nature works that way. But you see, nobody understands that.p. 10

— Richard Feynman nature

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