Quotes from Richard P. Feynman

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, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to do it.

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

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?"

Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.

It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is

There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.

We need to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed. It's OK to say, "I don't know."

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.

Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

Investigating the forces that hold the nuclear particles together was a long task.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

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

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

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.

Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science - for to fill your heart with love is enough!