Top 300 Richard P. Feynman Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “I have a limited intelligence and I’ve used it in a particular direction.”

— Richard P. Feynman

202. “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 P. Feynman

203. “I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.”

— Richard P. Feynman

204. “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”

— Richard P. Feynman

205. “I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.”

— Richard P. Feynman

206. “Once we were driving in the midwest and we pulled into a McDonald’s. Someone came up to me and asked me why I have Feynman diagrams all over my van. I replied, “Because I am Feynman!” The young man went, “Ahhhhh!””

— Richard P. Feynman

207. “There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.”

— Richard P. Feynman

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

— Richard P. Feynman

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

— Richard P. Feynman

210. “In a way, the Nobel Prize has been something of a pain in the neck, though there was at least one time that I got some fun out of it, Shortly after I won the Prize, Gweneth and I received an invitation from the Brazilian government to be the guests of honor at the Carnaval celebrations in Rio.”

— Richard P. Feynman

211. “I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.”

— Richard P. Feynman

212. “In its efforts to learn as much as possible about nature, modern physics has found that certain things can never be “known” with certainty. Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.”

— Richard P. Feynman

213. “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.”

— Richard P. Feynman

214. “I learned from my father to translate: everything I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying.”

— Richard P. Feynman

215. “Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, “I am going to tell you something that you will never forget.” And then he said, “To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.”

— Richard P. Feynman

216. “It is probably better to realize that the probability concept is in a sense subjective, that it is always based on uncertain knowledge, and that its quantitative evaluation is subject to change as we obtain more information.”

— Richard P. Feynman

217. “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 P. Feynman

218. “One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much. I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians.”

— Richard P. Feynman

219. “Science is of value because it can produce something.”

— Richard P. Feynman

220. “Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure – the adventure into the unknown, an unknown that must be recognized as unknown in order to be explored, the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered, the attitude that all is uncertain. To summarize it: humility of the intellect.”

— Richard P. Feynman

221. “The things that mattered were honesty, independence, willingness to admit ignorance.”

— Richard P. Feynman

222. “I can’t understand anything in general unless I’m carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go. Some people think in the beginning that I’m kind of slow and I don’t understand the problem, because I ask a lot of these “dumb” questions:.”

— Richard P. Feynman

223. “It’s all generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to find the answer instead of trying to find a man who has a way of getting at the answer.”

— Richard P. Feynman

224. “This is not very important what I’m doing. I’m just proving something.”

— Richard P. Feynman

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

— Richard P. Feynman

226. “I’ve found out since that such people don’t know what they’re doing, and get insulted when you make some suggestion or criticism.”

— Richard P. Feynman

227. “Every object is a mixture of lots of things, so we can deal with it only as a series of approximations and idealizations.”

— Richard P. Feynman

228. “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.”

— Richard P. Feynman

229. “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...”

— Richard P. Feynman

230. “An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!”

— Richard P. Feynman

231. “The game I play is a very interesting one. It’s imagination, in a tight straightjacket.”

— Richard P. Feynman

232. “This is not yet a scientific age.”

— Richard P. Feynman

233. “This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore.”

— Richard P. Feynman

234. “Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”

— Richard P. Feynman

235. “I don’t believe in honors, it bothers me, honors bother, honors is epaulettes, honors is uniforms. My papa brought me up this way. I can’t stand it, it hurts me.”

— Richard P. Feynman

236. “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.”

— Richard P. Feynman

237. “It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.”

— Richard P. Feynman

238. “I’m not responsible for what other people think I am able to do; I don’t have to be good because they think I’m going to be good.”

— Richard P. Feynman

239. “Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.”

— Richard P. Feynman

240. “You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.”

— Richard P. Feynman

241. “Once you start doubting, just like you’re supposed to doubt, you ask me if the science is true. You say no, we don’t know what’s true, we’re trying to find out and everything is possibly wrong.”

— Richard P. Feynman

242. “We are never right, we can only be sure we are wrong.”

— Richard P. Feynman

243. “So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton’s equations, are reversible.”

— Richard P. Feynman

244. “Maybe that is why young people make success. They don’t know enough.”

— Richard P. Feynman

245. “A great deal more is known than has been proved.”

— Richard P. Feynman

246. “In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.”

— Richard P. Feynman

247. “The problem of creating something new, but which is consistent with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty.”

— Richard P. Feynman

248. “When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you’ve told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway.”

— Richard P. Feynman

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

— Richard P. Feynman

250. “We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.”

— Richard P. Feynman