Richard P. Feynman
If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood .Collection: Years
I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.Collection: Answers
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.Collection: Ignorance
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! 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. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. 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.Collection: Falling In Love
Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.Collection: Philosophy
Don't pay attention to "authorities," think for yourself.Collection: Thinking
Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.Collection: Inspirational
If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.Collection: Thinking
You can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.Collection: Simplicity
We need to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed. It's OK to say, "I don't know."Collection: Learning
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.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Interesting
I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.Collection: Smart
I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.Collection: Atoms
First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.Collection: Beautiful
If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.Collection: Science
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.Collection: People
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.Collection: Life
You do not know anything until you have practiced.Collection: Knows
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?"Collection: Looks
Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.Collection: Degrees
I have a limited intelligence and I've used it in a particular direction.Collection: Used
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.Collection: Physics
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter.Collection: Falling In Love
If a guy tells me the probability of failure is 1 in 100,000, I know he's full of crap.Collection: Guy
I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention--it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature. Any word can be spelled just as well a different way.Collection: Real
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.Collection: Philosophy
The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!Collection: Learning
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.Collection: Delight
John von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann's advice. It's made me a very happy man ever since. But it was von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility!Collection: Powerful
A great deal more is known than has been proved.Collection: Math
What did you ASK at school today?Collection: Educational
It is simple, therefore it is beautifulCollection: Beautiful
If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.Collection: Apples
It's amazing how many people even today use a computer to do something you can do with a pencil and paper in less time.Collection: People
Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.Collection: Theory
Victory usually goes to those green enough to underestimate the monumental hurdles they are facing.Collection: Victory
A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.Collection: Doubt
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is 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.Collection: Thinking
What do I advise? Forget it all. Don't be afraid. Do what you get the most pleasure from. Is it to build a cloud chamber? Then go on doing things like that. Develop your talents wherever they may lead. Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!If you have any talent,or any occupation that delights you,do it, and do it to the hiltCollection: Clouds
[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.Collection: Views
It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.Collection: Atheist
The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.Collection: Science
Science is a process for learning about nature in which competing ideas about how the world works are measured against observations.Collection: Ideas
The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.Collection: Judging
Physics is not the most important thing. Love is.Collection: Science
People often think I'm a faker, but I'm usually honest, in a certain way--in such a way that often nobody believes me!Collection: Sarcastic
Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers... This is not yet a scientific age.Collection: Writing