642 Quotes by Richard P. Feynman

Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure – the adventure into the unknown, an unknown that must be recognized as unknown in order to be explored, the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered, the attitude that all is uncertain. To summarize it: humility of the intellect.

I don’t think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.

I’m trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS.

It is simple, therefore it is beautiful.

Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science – for to fill your heart with love is enough.

I learned from my father to translate: everything I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying.

This is the key of modern science and is the beginning of the true understanding of nature. This idea. That to look at the things, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained, may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation.

Some things that satisfy the rules of algebra can be interesting to mathematicians even though they don’t always represent a real situation.

This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men that made the democracy that we live under. 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.