Famous Quotes & Sayings

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

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.

Lord Shaftesbury

Wit is its own remedy. Liberty and commerce bring it to its true standard. The only danger is the laying an embargo. The same thing happens here as in the case of trade: impositions and restrictions reduce it to a low ebb; nothing is so advantageous to it as a free port.

William J. Brennan

The framers knew that liberty is a fragile thing, and so should we.

Woodrow Wilson

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

William J. Clinton

I can spend your money better than you can.

William J. Clinton

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.

Will Durant

When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.

Will Durant

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

Will Durant

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

Robert Nozick

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.

Richard D. James

A lot of composers before me have been on this mission to change the world by getting off equal temperament, and I'm definitely one of those.

Lord Shaftesbury

As many as are the difficulties which Virtue has to encounter in this world, her force is yet superior.

Robert Collier

We have become so accustomed to hearing everyone claim that his product is the best in the world, or the cheapest, that we take all such statements with a grain of salt.

Rob Thurman

We all have our security blankets in this world. Some are just sharper than others.

Rob Sheffield

'I'll Tumble 4 Ya' has to be one of the most ridiculous hit singles that any international superstars have given the world.

Richard P. Feynman

Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.

Richard Dawkins

Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.

Richard Dawkins

Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.

Richard Wright

Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible... Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.