44 Quotes by Richard Feynman

Although my mother didn't know anything about science, she had a great influence on me as well. In particular, she had a wonderful sense of humor, and I learned from her that the highest form of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.

First of all there is matter—and, remarkably enough, all matter is the same. The matter of which the stars are made is known to be the same as the matter on the earth...The same kinds of atoms appear to be in living creatures as in non-living creatures.

Many races as well as cultural influences of men of all kinds have mixed into any man. To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory.

We could, of course, use any notation we want; do not laugh at notations; invent them, they are powerful. In fact,mathematics is, to a large extent, invention of better notations.

The deeper a thing is, the more interesting it is

I think, however, that there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher --- a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things.

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

The best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher—a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks aboutthe things. It’s impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned.