Richard P. Feynman quote: "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."

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I thought one should have the attitude of 'What do you care what other people think!'
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject and what you want them to know, and ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

It is necessary to look at the results of observation objectively, because you, the experimenter, mi...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot b...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they lear...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The thing that doesn't fit is the thing that's the most interesting: the part that doesn'...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get 'Calculus for the Practical Man.' By...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I don't believe in honors - it bothers me. Honors bother: honors is epaulettes; honors is unifor...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the co...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?'...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The first amazing fact about gravitation is that the ratio of inertial mass to gravitational mass is...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is i...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

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

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric r...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Working out another system to replace Newton's laws took a long time because phenomena at the at...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so d...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

What goes on inside a star is better understood than one might guess from the difficulty of having t...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same ki...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth,...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the m...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

It is a curious historical fact that modern quantum mechanics began with two quite different mathema...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Europeans are much more serious than we are in America because they think that a good place to discu...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks comple...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I got a signed document from Bullock's saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignmen...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The extreme weakness of quantum gravitational effects now poses some philosophical problems; maybe n...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and ch...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so ma...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is o...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

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

In the Raphael Room, the secret turned out to be that only some of the paintings were made by the gr...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serio...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of sc...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

You're unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff, but further, y...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Once you have a computer that can do a few things - strictly speaking, one that has a certain 's...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I think equation guessing might be the best method to proceed to obtain the laws for the part of phy...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoreti...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

If we have an atom that is in an excited state and so is going to emit a photon, we cannot say when ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but the...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new p...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The correct statement of the laws of physics involves some very unfamiliar ideas which require advan...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Often one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world a...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Once I get on a puzzle, I can't get off.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn&#...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The situation in the sciences is this: A concept or an idea which cannot be measured or cannot be re...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and i...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

The original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off o...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real probl...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry abo...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and ...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

If you realize all the time what's kind of wonderful - that is, if we expand our experience into...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

I don't understand what it's all about or what's worth what, but if the people in the Sw...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not real...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature canno...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live n...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner pos...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest to fool.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some ot...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot b...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

(I) once asked Richard Feynman whether he thought of mathematics and, by extension, the laws of phys...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? Our poets do not write about it; our arti...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results,but that's not why we do it.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

If you're teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

(Joan,1941) She wrote me a letter asking,"How can I read it?,Its so hard." I told her to start at th...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I... a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. H...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstrac...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

A philosopher once said 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things tha...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really con...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion....
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so f...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who a...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your sa...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Nobody understands quantum theory.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious d...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

no respect whatsoever for authority.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics
RICHARD FEYNMAN

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't a...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I learned from her [his mother] that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly eve...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not real...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Electrons, when they were first discovered, behaved exactly like particles or bullets, very simply. ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contributio...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

You got to learn everything anyway, so which is first, is not essential.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I want to build a billion tiny factories, models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneous...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

A few years after I gave some lectures for the freshmen at Caltech (which were published as the Feyn...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The first person you should be careful not to fool is yourself. Because you are the easiest person t...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some ot...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I suddenly remembered that Murray Gell-Mann and I were supposed to give talks at that conference on ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

There were a lot of fools at that conference—pompous fools—and pompous fools drive me up the wal...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do t...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

How much do you value life?” “Sixty-four.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

the whole problem of discovering what was the matter, and figuring out what you have to do to fix it...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

That was a very good way to get educated, working on the senior problems and learning how to pronoun...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I wouldn’t stop until I figured the damn thing out–it would take me fifteen or twenty minutes. B...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and tha...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I have to keep going to find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic ch...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

When I tried to show him how an electromagnet works by making a little coil of wire and hanging a na...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by s...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

That’s the trouble with not being in your own field: You don’t take it seriously.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

You have to have absolute confidence. Keep right on going, and nothing will happen.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

There was a Princess Somebody of Denmark sitting at a table with a number of people around her, and ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don’t want to destroy this pleasant machine that...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

My father had the spirit and integrity of a scientist, but he was a salesman. I remember asking him ...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emoti...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I learned from her that every woman is worried
about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

– and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them and try...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

What Do You Care What Other People Think?
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and tha...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' — which is just another wa...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The next question was — what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people an...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impo...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what se...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it d...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
RICHARD FEYNMAN

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

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they ar...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about w...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

Mathematics is a language plus reasoning; it is like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool fo...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind o...
RICHARD FEYNMAN

All television is children's television.
RICHARD P. ADLER

You can only stumble if you are moving.
RICHARD P. CARLTON

The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as yo...
RICHARD P. DENNEY

A book series is never truly over. The story lives on, even when the final page has been turned.
RICHARD P. DENNEY

Interestingly, the patients who presented to me self-diagnosed [with Dissociative Identity Disorder ...
RICHARD P. KLUFT

The summary of Lambert and Lillenfelt’s “Bloodstains” in Scientific American Mind in the Octob...
RICHARD P. KLUFT

It is clear that the Vatican does not know what a theologian is and what a university is.
RICHARD P. MCBRIEN

As a practising lawyer, I was mediocre, but I worked hard as a law officer of the state government a...
P. SATHASIVAM

If you go back to any period in India's history, all the hard decisions this country had to take...
P. CHIDAMBARAM

I have maintained that the people of India are ahead of their governments. The people of India are a...
P. CHIDAMBARAM

When I came back to India after Harvard Business School, I started as a lawyer and as a trade union ...
P. CHIDAMBARAM

Let me tell you, very frankly, when I went to the Harvard Business School I was more or less a commi...
P. CHIDAMBARAM

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.

Copied!

Richard P. Feynman

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.

Richard P. Feynman

Share:

Related

More Richard P. Feynman