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.

Roger Ascham

Marke all Mathematicall heades, which be onely and wholy bent to those sciences, how solitarie they be themselues, how vnfit to liue with others, & how vnapte to serue in the world.

Art Buchwald

The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.

Douglas Adams

The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making.

Albert Einstein

If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.

Ronald Fisher

If ... we choose a group of social phenomena with no antecedent knowledge of the causation or absence of causation among them, then the calculation of correlation coefficients, total or partial, will not advance us a step toward evaluating the importance of the causes at work.

Maurice Chevalier

Considering the alternative. . . it's not too bad at all.

John Ralston Saul

I have a theory of statistics: if you can double them or halve them and they still work, they are really good statistics.

Michael Crichton

Theories are just fantasies. And they change.

Hippocrates

And he will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters.

Samuel Butler

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

Greg Toczydlowski

Industry experts predict that hybrids could make up nearly 15 percent of total registered vehicles within the next decade.

Margaret Chan

All experts on WHO advisory groups for developing norms, standards and guidelines are required to disclose interests regarding the advisory committee's area of work. If a declared interest is potentially significant, then the expert is either excluded from the meeting or given a restricted role.

Lennart Nilsson

Of course, today at the Karolinska Institute, I am working with some top experts - even some Nobel prize winners. They have the latest news and I have the technique.

Mahalia Jackson

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

Robert A. Heinlein

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.

Karen Hill

They give out loads and loads of information, and give you an opportunity to hear many experts who teach these seminars, and many provide worksheets to put your ideas down on paper,

Michael Kennedy

It is under investigation by our experts, subcontractors and our own personnel.

Rosette Lerias

For as long as the rescuers who are on the ground, who are the experts in what they are doing, say that 'we will continue', then we will support them.