The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

2 " Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

3 " I believe, therefore, that although it is not the case today, that there may some day come a time, I should hope, when it will fully appreciated that the power of governments should be limited; that governments ought not to be empowered to decide the validity of scientific theories, that this is a ridiculous thing for them to try to do; that they are not to decide the description of history or of economic theory or of philosophy. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

4 " 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 that might be wrong. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

5 " I believe that we must attack these things in which we do not believe. Not attack by the method of cutting off the heads of the people, but attack in the sense of discuss. I believe that we should demand that people try in their own minds to obtain for themselves a more consistent picture of their own world; that they not permit themselves the luxury of having their brain cut in four pieces or two pieces even, and on one side they believe this and on the other side they believe that, but never try to compare the two points of view. Because we have learned that, by trying to put the points of view that we have in our head together and comparing one to the other, we make some progress in understanding and in appreciating where we are and what we are. And I believe that science has remained irrelevant because we wait until somebody asks us questions or until we are invited to give a speech on Einstein’s theory to people who don’t understand Newtonian mechanics, but we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing, or on astrology — on what is the scientific view of astrology today. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

6 " The things that mattered were honesty, independence, willingness to admit ignorance. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

7 " I think we should teach them [the people] wonders and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

8 " I've always been rather very one-sided about the science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it. I didn't have time to learn, and I didn't have much patience for what's called the humanities; even though in the university there were humanities that you had to take, I tried my best to avoid somehow to learn anything and to work on it. It's only afterwards, when I've gotten older and more relaxed that I've spread out a little bit — I've learned to draw, and I read a little bit, but I'm really still a very one-sided person and don't know a great deal. I have a limited intelligence and I've used it in a particular direction. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

9 " 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. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

10 " I won’t have anything to do with the Nobel Prize . . . it’s a pain in the . . . (LAUGHS). I don’t like honors. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

11 " alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves . . . mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business . . . trillions apart . . . yet forming white surf in unison. Ages on ages . . . before any eyes could see . . . year after year . . . thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? . . . on a dead planet, with no life to entertain. Never at rest . . . tortured by energy . . . wasted prodigiously by the sun . . . poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves . . . and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity . . . living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein . . . dancing a pattern ever more intricate. Out of the cradle onto the dry land . . . here it is standing . . . atoms with consciousness . . . matter with curiosity. Stands at the sea . . . wonders at wondering . . . I . . . a universe "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

12 " 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. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

13 " لا ينبغي أن نخشى من الشكّ بل يجب أن نرحّب به ونناقشه "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

14 " 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. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

15 " it is our capacity to doubt that will determine the future of civilization. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

16 " You see, one thing is, 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. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

17 " The first is the matter of judging evidence–well, the first thing really is, before you begin you must not know the answer. So you begin by being uncertain as to what the answer is. This is very, very important, so important that I would like to delay that aspect, and talk about that still further along in my speech. The question of doubt and uncertainty is what is necessary to begin; for if you already know the answer there is no need to gather any evidence about it. Well, "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

18 " There are very remarkable mysteries about the fact that we’re able to do so many more things than apparently animals can do, and other questions like that, but those are mysteries I want to investigate without knowing the answer to them, and so altogether I can’t believe theses special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too local, too provincial. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

19 " Wir müssen unbedingt Raum für Zweifel lassen, sonst gibt es keinen Fortschritt, kein Dazulernen. Man kann nichts Neues herausfinden, wenn man nicht vorher eine Frage stellt. Und um zu fragen, bedarf es des Zweifelns. "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

20 " Now we have found that this is of paramount importance in order to progress. 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 "

― , The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman