Top 300 Richard P. Feynman Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.”

— Richard P. Feynman

52. “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

— Richard P. Feynman

53. “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

54. “But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.”

— Richard P. Feynman

55. “You can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.”

— Richard P. Feynman

56. “Computer science is not as old as physics; it lags by a couple of hundred years. However, this does not mean that there is significantly less on the computer scientist’s plate than on the physicist’s: younger it may be, but it has had a far more intense upbringing!”

— Richard P. Feynman

57. “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

58. “It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”

— Richard P. Feynman

59. “I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb.”

— Richard P. Feynman

60. “Turbulence is the most important unsolved problem of classical physics.”

— Richard P. Feynman

61. “But logic is not all, one needs one’s heart to follow an idea.”

— Richard P. Feynman

62. “Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.”

— Richard P. Feynman

63. “Thank you very Much, I enjoyed myself.”

— Richard P. Feynman

64. “Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”

— Richard P. Feynman

65. “Since then I never pay attention to anything by “experts”. I calculate everything myself.”

— Richard P. Feynman

66. “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

67. “All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it.”

— Richard P. Feynman

68. “The easiest person to fool is yourself.”

— Richard P. Feynman

69. “I think nature’s imagination Is so much greater than man’s, she’s never going to let us relax.”

— Richard P. Feynman

70. “Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem.”

— Richard P. Feynman

71. “Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naive ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.”

— Richard P. Feynman

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

— Richard P. Feynman

73. “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.”

— Richard P. Feynman

74. “Today’s brains are yesterday’s mashed potatoes.”

— Richard P. Feynman

75. “Victory usually goes to those green enough to underestimate the monumental hurdles they are facing.”

— Richard P. Feynman

76. “You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don’t want to destroy this pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.”

— Richard P. Feynman

77. “It turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.”

— Richard P. Feynman

78. “All mass is interaction.”

— Richard P. Feynman

79. “I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something. How careful you have to be about checking your experiments. How easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something.”

— Richard P. Feynman

80. “There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble.”

— Richard P. Feynman

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

— Richard P. Feynman

82. “No man is rich who is unsatisfied, but who wants nothing possess his heart’s desire.”

— Richard P. Feynman

83. “I love to think. I once considered taking drugs as an attempt to better understand an altered state of mind; however, I decided not to. I didn’t want to chance ruining the machine.”

— Richard P. Feynman

84. “Energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right.”

— Richard P. Feynman

85. “It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.”

— Richard P. Feynman

86. “Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.”

— Richard P. Feynman

87. “That is the logical tight-rope on which we have to walk if we wish to interpret nature.”

— Richard P. Feynman

88. “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

89. “You do not know anything until you have practiced.”

— Richard P. Feynman

90. “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

91. “For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.”

— Richard P. Feynman

92. “Some people think Wheeler’s gotten crazy in his later years, but he’s always been crazy.”

— Richard P. Feynman

93. “A person talks in such generalities that everyone can understand him and it’s considered to be some deep philosophy. However, I would like to be very rather more special and I would like to be understood in an honest way, rather than in a vague way.”

— Richard P. Feynman

94. “There are thousands of years in the past, and there is an unknown amount of time in the future. There are all kinds of opportunities, and there are all kinds of dangers.”

— Richard P. Feynman

95. “If you can’t explain something to a first year student, then you haven’t really understood .”

— Richard P. Feynman

96. “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

— Richard P. Feynman

97. “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!”

— Richard P. Feynman

98. “I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys – but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!”

— Richard P. Feynman

99. “What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?”

— Richard P. Feynman

100. “By honest I don’t mean that you only tell what’s true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind.”

— Richard P. Feynman