Famous Quotes & Sayings

Rob Brydon

Math was a two-part exam and I once didn't go for the second part. I knew I'd done so badly on the first it was hopeless. I re-took it about four or five times. I think I eventually got it by getting the top GCSE grade.

Richard P. Feynman

What is necessary for 'the very existence of science,' and what the characteristics of nature are, are not to be determined by pompous preconditions, they are determined always by the material with which we work, by nature herself. We look, and we see what we find, and we cannot say ahead of time successfully what it is going to look like. ... It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

Richard P. Feynman

To not know math is a severe limitation to understanding the world.

Russell Hoban

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

Robert Toth

I failed math; Einstein passed it. But he couldn’t paint and sculpt like me. So we all have these specialties, these strengths.

William Powell

Cultivate solitude and quiet and a few sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise and thousands of nodding acquaintances.

William Joyce

And they're also very good at math, these super boogers, and so they teach Billy the ways of mathematics.

Winston Churchill

I had a feeling once about mathematics - that I saw it all... but it was after dinner and I let it go.

Winston Churchill

I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.

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.

David Stanley

He didn't go over to that guy's house for a confrontation, he just wanted to know what was going on.

Jerry Shuster

He (O'Connor) can't be indiscriminate. He can't tear down a house here and tear down a house there, because then it looks like it's more for show. But if they can do three, even though they need 30 taken down, if those three are strategic, it's a tremendous plus.

Mike Moore

We take it from the house and turn it into what you see here.

Robert Hoehn

I think by the end of next week they'll be cheaper. We'll get through some House legislation yet.

Ruth Rendell

I was a child, and in 1942, I was evacuated to the Cotswolds with my mother, who was a teacher - she went with her school. I lived in one house in the village, and my mother was in the vicarage.

Robert Sweeney

I was just sitting there watching t.v., and it sounded like the whole house shook.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.

Tori Amos

I like cosy, intimate houses.

Robert Novak

If Communism goes, I've still got the U.S. House of Representatives.