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.

Sarah Vowell

You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.

Rudolf Steiner

We differ from one another in our individual gifts which, however, belong to our inner nature.

Walt Disney

I wanted to retain my individuality. I was afraid of being hampered by studio policies. I knew if someone else got control, I would be restrained.

Walt Whitman

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our expenses are all for conformity.

Lascelles Abercrombie

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.

Henrik Lundqvist

I love all the different ways that New Yorkers show their individuality through what they choose to wear.