Richard Feynman

"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."

Richard Feynman

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

Richard Feynman

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

Richard Feynman

"Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is."

Richard Feynman

"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt."

Richard Feynman

"We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress."

Richard Feynman

"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."

Richard Feynman

"All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' — which is just another way of saying that you can't."

Richard Feynman

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

Richard Feynman

"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it."

Richard Feynman

"Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

Richard Feynman

"I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!"

Richard Feynman

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

Richard Feynman

"[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."

Richard Feynman

"Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves."

Richard Feynman

"I have no responsibility to live up to what others expect of me. That's their mistake, not my failing."

Richard Feynman

"If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world."

Richard Feynman

"We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!"

Richard Feynman

"I had too much stuff. My machines came from too far away."

Richard Feynman

"In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public. When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument. The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization."

Richard Feynman

"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."

Richard Feynman

"Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize."

Richard Feynman

"We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work."

Richard Feynman

"A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven."

Richard Feynman

"The chance is high that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But, on the off-chance that it is in another direction — a direction obvious from an unfashionable view of field theory — who will find it? Only someone who has sacrificed himself by teaching himself quantum electrodynamics from a peculiar and unfashionable point of view; one that he may have to invent for himself."

Richard Feynman