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

Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory.

Richard P. Feynman

The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination in a straightjacket, which is this: that it has to agree with the known laws of physics. ... It requires imagination to think of what's possible, and then it requires an analysis back, checking to see whether it fits, whether its allowed, according to what's known, okay?

Richard P. Feynman

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.

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

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

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.

Russell Hoban

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

Lord Kelvin

Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

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.

William Booth

If any of them that come through the program are having trouble in math, I'll tutor them. (Teaching) is the most important thing I do.

Euclid

QED - Quod erat demonstrandum.