Famous Quotes & Sayings

Mary Callahan Erdoes

I was a mathematics major and really into math.

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

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

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

A great deal more is known than has been proved.

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.

William J. Clinton

By the end of the first month of the 1995 session, each senator will have made more money than any person who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage for the entire year.

Richard Preston

If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.

Richard P. Feynman

If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives.

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

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things ...

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

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

Richard P. Feynman

To guess what to keep and what to throw away takes considerable skill. Actually it is probably merely a matter of luck, but it looks as if it takes considerable skill.

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.

Joe Clark

I think it is too simple to suggest that it's simply Mr. Harper's fault.

Darius Kasparaitis

We have to be more gritty, more hitting. We probably have to play much simpler hockey.

Richard P. Feynman

Just as a poet often has license from the rules of grammar and pronunciation, we should like to ask for 'physicists' license from the rules of mathematics in order to express what we wish to say in as simple a manner as possible.

Richard John Neuhaus

Consumerism is, quite precisely, the consuming of life by the things consumed. It is living in a manner that is measured by having rather than being... and consumerism is hardly the sin of the rich. The poor, driven by discontent and envy, may be as consumed by what they do not have as the rich are consumed by what they do have. The question is not, certainly not most importantly, a question about economics. It is first and foremost a cultural and moral problem requiring a cultural and moral remedy.

Richard Hofstadter

To be confronted with a simple and unqualified evil is no doubt a kind of luxury....

Richard Dawkins

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

Richard Dawkins

A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right.

Richard Dawkins

I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

Richelle Mead

The question was which spell did I make? Which did I have time to make? The answer was eerily simple. I had time to make all of them.