Famous Quotes & Sayings

Richard P. Feynman

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

Richard P. Feynman

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.

Richard P. Feynman

It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.

Richard P. Feynman

Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.

Richard P. Feynman

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

Richard P. Feynman

The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. ... If you will simply admit that maybe [Nature] does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possible avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

Richard P. Feynman

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

Richard Dawkins

Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund.

Richard Whately

To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.

Russell Hoban

More and more I'm aware that the permutations are not unlimited.

Gustave Flaubert

Tout ce qu'on invente est vrai, soi-en sure. La poesie est une chose aussi precise que la geometrie.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.

Max Black

... a result once generally accepted by mathematicians is seldom retracted, and then only with great pangs. The Nature of Mathematics

Nicolaus Copernicus

Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur Mathematics is written for mathematicians De Revolutionibus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Mathematics is written for mathematicians.

Georg Cantor

A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as a One.

Todd Berrier

With 43 teams here, you do the math.

Bill Gates

In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that's different from a California textbook that's different from a Massachusetts textbook. That's very expensive.

Luxon Zembe

It is much better for environmental protection and efficiency of vehicles. It (unleaded fuel) is of a higher quality and would increase efficiency of our machinery.

Zig Ziglar

Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.

Al Diamond

If all efficiency experts were laid end to end- I'd be in favor of it

Yoshihiro Kawaoka

By reducing the number of plasmids, we increase the efficiency of virus production,

Eric Bosshard

Home Depot is seeing really good performance on sales and payback from some of the productivity initiatives and efficiency improvements they've put in place,