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

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.

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.

Matt Stone

He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin.

Richard Dawkins

Science shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

William James

Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

William Cowper

Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, Needs only to be seen to be admired.

Robert Southey

Without religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the possessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed; if well disposed, only more unhappy.

Sandra Day O'Connor

(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.

Neale Donald Walsch

Everywhere religion has gone it has created disunity.

Jorge Luis Borges

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

Jonathan Swift

What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.

Ellen Glasgow

It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.

Mark Twain

Human nature is the same everywhere; it deifies success, it has nothing but scorn for defeat.

Edward Abbey

Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature; they distort it.

William Shakespeare

Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.

Thomas S. Monson

True love can alter human lives and change human nature.

Sylvia Earle

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.

Thucydides

Human nature is the one constant through human history. It is always there.

Robert Agostinelli

I'm a big believer in human nature.

Margaret Mead

Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.