Richard P. Feynman Men Quotations

Working out another system to replace Newton's laws took a long time because phenomena at the atomic level were quite strange. One had to lose one's common sense in order to perceive what was happening at the atomic level.

With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics.

The correct statement of the laws of physics involves some very unfamiliar ideas which require advanced mathematics for their description. Therefore, one needs a considerable amount of preparatory training even to learn what the words mean.

I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn't getting anywhere - like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department - I would draw the other people.

I got a signed document from Bullock's saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignment. Of course, nobody bought any of them, but otherwise, I was a big success: I had my drawings on sale at Bullock's!

From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work - not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in - a trial and error system.

The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.

Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative.

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!

But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

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.

Unless a thing can be defined by measurement, it has no place in a theory. And since an accurate value of the momentum of a localized particle cannot be defined by measurement it therefore has no place in the theory.

The test of all knowledge is experiment.

We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imagining of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck-half of us upside down-by a mysterious attraction, to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years, than to be carried on the back of an elephant supported on a tortoise swimming in a bottomless sea.

Although it is uncertain, it is necessary to make science useful. Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done; it is not good if it only tells you what just went on.

There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time ... On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

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!"

The other thing that gives a scientific man the creeps in the world today are the methods of choosing leaders - in every nation. Today, for example, in the United States, the two political parties have decided to employ public relations men, that is, advertising men, who are trained in the necessary methods of telling the truth or lying in order to develop a product.

No man is rich who is unsatisfied, but who wants nothing possess his heart's desire.

If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.

[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!

The basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual... the humility of the spirit.

I think nature's imagination Is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax

There’s so much distance between the fundamental rules and the final phenomenon, that it’s almost unbelievable that the final variety of phenomenon can come from such a steady operation of such simple rules.

Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of substances, it was a tremendous success. But still there was the problem of the interaction of light and matter.

Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea.

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

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.

So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton's equations, are reversible.