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.

Robert Kerr

Kenya is a multi-party democracy and a modern world which has a benefit of hundred years of experience and debate from around the world on the subject of free speech and the accumulated wisdom that a free press is the essence of democratic governance, which makes government action during the standard raid so mystifying.

Ira Loss

I suspect that this is a relatively isolated event. I don't think there's a crime wave under way in biology research. These actions usually come about because someone is under tremendous pressure to perform.

Tom Daschle

It again demonstrates why we have to address the infrastructure of our intelligence-gathering analysis and the actions that are taken as a result of that analysis, ... We've got a lot of work to do, and this is just the most recent reminder that we've got a problem here and it's got to be fixed and it's got to be done this year.

Kofi Annan

I think it is all right for one ambassador to come and push, but an ambassador always has to remember that there are 190 others who will have to be convinced, or a vast majority of them, for action to take place,

Jim Talent

I think Iran needs to know that that option is there, and then we can hope that, you know, Security Council action or negotiations of some kind will work. So yeah, I think it?s essential that it be an option.

Winston Churchill

It becomes still more difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence or even sanity. What kind of people do they think we are?

Art Larson

It appears to be highly subjective. This survey is giving more weight to words over action.

Richard Holbrooke

He was a communist opportunist and became an opportunistic nationalist. His actions led to the deaths of over 300,000 people, four wars, the instability in Europe, creation of criminal gangs ... he was never going to see daylight again and that was appropriate and now he's gone.

Ken McBride

He wanted to cover more ground and make more cases. He was a man of action.

Richard P. Feynman

Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.

Winston Churchill

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. [Referring to the theory that over-production caused the Depression]

Kenneth R. Miller

We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth

Herbert A. Simon

The classical theory of omniscient rationality is strikingly simple and beautiful.

Albert Einstein

The most practical solution is a good theory.

Albert Einstein

The economists will have to revise their theories of value.

Albert Einstein

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicty of its premises is.

Albert Einstein

Since others have explained my theory, I can no longer understand it myself.

Don DeLillo

That's what in theory differentiates a writer from everyone else. You see and hear more clearly.