Frasi di Richard Feynman (216 frasi, pagina 6)

Richard Feynman: 216 frasi 23 Mi piace

Richard Feynman frasi celebri

“Sono fatto così: voglio sempre capire.”

Richard Feynman

frase finale del capitolo Certo, Mr. Big!

“L'ipotesi più importante di tutta la biologia, per esempio, è che tutto ciò che gli animali fanno, lo fanno gli atomi. In altre parole, non vi è nulla che gli esseri viventi facciano che non possa essere inteso partendo dal punto di vista che essi sono composti di atomi i quali agiscono secondo le leggi della fisica.”

Richard Feynman

volume I-1, cap. 1-3, 1994, p. 1-13

“Non so che cosa non va nella gente: non imparano usando l'intelligenza, ma solo meccanicamente o giù di lì. Il loro sapere è così fragile.”

Richard Feynman

“Penso di poter affermare che nessuno capisce la meccanica quantistica.”

Richard Feynman

citato in Tony Hey, Patrick Walters, "The New Quantum Universe", 2003

“Non sopporterei di morire due volte. È una cosa così noiosa.”

Richard Feynman

I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.
Ultime parole pronunicate da Richard Feynman come riportato in James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, 1992.

“Il tempo è ciò che accade quando non accade nient'altro.”

Richard Feynman

vol. I-1, cap. 5-2, 1994, p. 5-2

Frasi sulla scienza di Richard Feynman

“Ho imparato allora di che sostanza era fatta la scienza: era la pazienza.”

Richard Feynman

Cos'è la scienza? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cosè-la-scienza-di-richard-feynman-francesco-vissani/?published=t

“La natura, così come oggi siamo in grado di capirla, si comporta in modo tale che risulta fondamentalmente impossibile prevedere esattamente cosa succederà in un dato esperimento. È una cosa orribile. Infatti i filosofi avevano stabilito come uno dei requisiti fondamentali della scienza che nelle stesse condizioni debba verificarsi la stessa cosa. Questo è semplicemente falso: non si tratta di una condizione fondamentale della scienza. Il fatto è che non succede la stessa cosa, e possiamo trovare solo una media dei risultati, con metodi statistici. Ciò nonostante, la scienza non è completamente crollata. Tra l'altro, i filosofi dicono un sacco di cose su cosa sia assolutamente necessario per la scienza, ed è sempre (per quello che si può vedere) piuttosto ingenuo, e probabilmente sbagliato.”

Richard Feynman

da Sei pezzi facili; 2000

“Scienza è credere nell'ignoranza degli esperti.”

Richard Feynman libro The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out : The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman, curato da Jeffery Robbins, ISBN 0-14-029034-6, alle pagine 186-187. Basato sulla trascrizione di un'intervista del 1981

“Che cos'è la scienza? Con questa parola di solito s'intendono tre cose diverse, o un misto delle tre. Non credo ci sia bisogno di essere precisi: essere troppo precisi non è sempre una buona idea. «Scienza» a volte significa un metodo speciale di scoprire le cose; a volte significa l'insieme delle conoscenze che si originano dalle cose scoperte, ma può anche significare tutte le cose nuove che si possono fare usando la conoscenza acquisita, o il fare effettivamente queste cose.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Il Senso delle cose, p. 15

“Non è scienza sapere come passare da gradi celsius a gradi fahrenheit. È necessario, ma non è esattamente scienza.”

Richard Feynman

Cos'è la scienza? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cosè-la-scienza-di-richard-feynman-francesco-vissani/?published=t

“William Harvey disse che quello che secondo Bacon era la scienza, era la scienza che avrebbe fatto un Lord cancelliere. Lui parlava di fare osservazioni, ma ometteva il fattore cruciale: di esercitare giudizio su cosa osservare e a cosa prestare attenzione.”

Richard Feynman

Cos'è la scienza? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cosè-la-scienza-di-richard-feynman-francesco-vissani/?published=t

Frasi su tempo di Richard Feynman

“Tra molto tempo – per esempio tra diecimila anni – non c'è dubbio che la scoperta delle equazioni di Maxwell sarà giudicato l'evento più significativo del XIX secolo. La guerra civile americana apparirà insignificante e provinciale se paragonata a questo importante evento scientifico della medesima decade.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Le equazioni di Maxwell furono presentate alla Royal Society nel 1864; la guerra di secessione americana si combatté dal 12 aprile 1861 al 26 maggio 1865. Da Lectures on Physics, vol. II.

“La nostra immaginazione è tesa al massimo; non, come nelle storie fantastiche, per immaginare cose che in realtà non esistono, ma proprio per comprendere ciò che davvero esiste.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Citato all'inizio di Wheeler, Taylor, Fisica dello spazio-tempo.

“Quello che non riesco a creare, non lo saprò mai capire.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Frase sulla sua lavagna al tempo della sua morte nel 1988; così com'è riportata in L'universo in un guscio di noce di Stephen Hawking.

“Impara a risolvere tutti i problemi che sono stati risolti.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Frase sulla sua lavagna al tempo della sua morte nel 1988.

“Feynman avanzò l'ipotesi che il positrone non sia nient'altro che un elettrone che, per un istante, si muove all'indietro nel tempo, e che la stessa spiegazione vale per altre antiparticelle. Sul cosiddetto diagramma di Feynman, che presto divenne per i fisici un comune strumento di lavoro, un asse rappresenta il tempo un altro lo spazio; le particelle possono muoversi in avanti e all'indietro nel tempo, e un positrone che viaggia, come tutti noi, nel futuro si comporta esattamente come si comporterebbe un elettrone che viaggiasse momentaneamente nel passato. Le inversioni di tempo postulate da Feynman hanno vita breve, perché nel nostro mondo e le antiparticelle hanno vita breve.”

Richard Feynman

Arthur Koestler

Richard Feynman Frasi e Citazioni

“Occorre fornire tutte le informazioni per aiutare gli altri a giudicare il valore del vostro contributo, non si possono dar solo quelle che orientino in un determinato modo.”

Richard Feynman

p. 339

Modo

“È importante tener presente che nella fisica odierna, noi non abbiano cognizione di ciò che l'energia è. Non abbiamo un modello che esprima l'energia come somma di termini definiti.”

Richard Feynman

vol. I parte I, traduzione di E. Clementel, S. Focardi e L. Monari, Inter European Editions, 1975, 4–1

“Ci sono i fisici teorici che inventano, deducono, e tirano a indovinare le nuove leggi, ma non le sperimentano, e ci sono i fisici sperimentali che fanno gli esperimenti, inventano, deducono e tirano a indovinare.”

Richard Feynman Sei pezzi facili

libro Sei pezzi facili

Sulle leggi

“Per una tecnologia che abbia successo, la realtà deve avere la precedenza sulle pubbliche relazioni, perché la natura non può essere imbrogliata.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Dall' appendice F http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm, che contiene alcune considerazioni di Feynman, del rapporto http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/genindex.htm della Commissione Rogers sul disastro dello Space Shuttle Challenger, giugno 1986.

Sul disastro , Sulla pace , Natura , Successo

“Se in un cataclisma andasse distrutta tutta la conoscenza scientifica, e soltanto una frase potesse essere trasmessa alle generazioni successive, quale affermazione conterrebbe la massima quantità di informazioni nel numero minimo di parole? Io credo che sarebbe l'ipotesi atomica (o dato di fatto atomico, o comunque vogliamo chiamarlo) secondo cui tutte le cose sono fatte di atomi, piccole particelle che si agitano con un moto perpetuo, attraendosi quando sono un po' distanti una dall'altra, ma respingendosi quando sono schiacciate una contro l'altra. In questa singola frase c'è un'enorme quantità di informazione sul mondo che ci circonda, se soltanto ci si riflette sopra con un po' di immaginazione.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Da Sei pezzi facili, 2000.

Sulla punizione , Sul mondo , Conoscenza , Immaginazione

“[I fisici] hanno cioè capito che il punto essenziale non è se una teoria piaccia o non piaccia, ma se fornisca previsioni in accordo con gli esperimenti. […] Dal punto di vista del buon senso l'elettrodinamica quantistica descrive una Natura assurda. Tuttavia è in perfetto accordo con i dati sperimentali. Mi auguro quindi che riusciate ad accettare la Natura per quello che è: assurda.”

Richard Feynman

This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!
Origine: Da QED. La strana teoria della luce e della materia, traduzione di F. Nicodemi, Adelphi, 1989.

Luce , Natura , Senso

“Questo convegno è stato peggio di un test di Rorschach, quando vi mettono davanti una macchia d'inchiostro informe, vi chiedono cosa vedete, ma se tentate di rispondere vi danno del matto.”

Richard Feynman

da capitolo L'elettricità è il fuoco?

“Se riuscissi a spiegarlo alla persona comune, non avrei meritato il Premio Nobel.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: People, 22 luglio 1985.

“Non nuoce al mistero il saperne qualcosa. Perché la realtà è tanto più meravigliosa di quanto artista alcuno del passato immaginasse! Perché i poeti del presente non ne parlano? Che uomini sono i poeti che parlerebbero di Giove se fosse simile a un uomo, ma se esso è un'immensa sfera ruotante di metano e di ammoniaca restano in silenzio?”

Richard Feynman

vol. I-1, cap. 3-4, 1994, p. 3-9

Sugli uomini , Passato , Silenzio , Realtà

“L'ipnosi mi è parsa un'esperienza molto illuminante. Spesso quando pensiamo che potremmo fare una determinata cosa ma che non vogliamo, in realtà stiamo solo dicendo, con altre parole, che non ne siamo capaci.”

Richard Feynman

p. 60

Realtà

“Vi auguro una cosa sola: la fortuna di trovarvi sempre in una situazione che vi consenta di mantenere liberamente l'integrità di cui ho parlato – di non sentirvi costretti a perderla per conservare il posto, trovare fondi, o altro. Possiate avere questa libertà.”

Richard Feynman

p. 344

La libertà

“I matematici possono dimostrare solo teoremi banali perché ogni teorema che viene dimostrato è necessariamente banale.”

Richard Feynman

p. 83

Matematica

“La matematica è linguaggio […] più logica.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Da La legge Fisica.

Matematica

“Stare a guardare è un'arte, e anche molto difficile, ed è bene farlo anziché partire in tromba in una direzione o nell'altra. Ma non è meglio fare qualcosa? Nossignore, se non hai le idee chiare è meglio stare a guardare.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Il Senso delle cose, p. 105

Sull'arte , Senso

“Einstein […] sbagliò quando disse: «Dio non gioca a dadi». La considerazione dei buchi neri suggerisce infatti non solo che Dio gioca a dadi, ma che a volte ci confonda gettandoli dove non li si può vedere.”

Richard Feynman

in realtà è una frase di Stephen Hawking

Sulla punizione

“Nelle trasmissioni radiofoniche si dà largo spazio non solo ai guaritori, ma anche ai predicatori che usano la bibbia per fare ogni sorta di previsioni. L'altro giorno c'era un tipo che aveva incontrato Dio in sogno, e lui gli aveva detto cose bellissime sulla sua congregazione, e altre cose del genere. Un'epoca scientifica, la nostra? Ma con questo qua non saprei proprio cosa fare, non saprei che ragionamento seguire per dimostrarvi immediatamente che è matto da legare.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Il Senso delle cose, p. 99

Tipo , Su Dio

“Ho scoperto che due secoli fa Si è visto che non c’era alcuna differenza, e quindi oggi molti non credono che essere una persona buona, o pregare molto, diminuisca le probabilità di una disgrazia.”

Richard Feynman

Origine: Il Senso delle cose, p. 98

Sulle persone

“Penso che sia molto importante - almeno per me lo era: se avete intenzione di insegnare alle persone a fare osservazioni, dovreste mostrare loro che ne possono tirar fuori qualcosa di meraviglioso.”

Richard Feynman

Cos'è la scienza? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cosè-la-scienza-di-richard-feynman-francesco-vissani/?published=t

Sulle persone

Richard Feynman: Frasi in inglese

“The same equations have the same solutions”

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Richard Feynman

volume II; lecture 12, "Electrostatic Analogs"; p. 12-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“So in order to understand the physics one must always have a neat balance and contain in his head all of the various propositions and their interelationships because the laws often extend beyond the range of their deductions. This will only have no importance when all the laws are known.”

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Richard Feynman libro The Character of Physical Law

Origine: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 2, “ The Relation of Mathematics to Physics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ZYEb0Vf8U”

“So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them.”

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Richard Feynman

volume I; lecture 22, "Algebra"; section 22-1, "Addition and multiplication"; p. 22-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.”

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Richard Feynman libro The Meaning of It All

lecture II: "The Uncertainty of Values"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

“Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, "What are you going to do about the farm question?" And he knows right away - bang, bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. "What are you going to do on the farm problem?" "Well, I don't know. I used to be a general, and I don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can't tell you ahead of time what solution, but I can give you some of the principles I'll try to use - not to make things difficult for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have some way to take care of them," etc., etc., etc.
Now such a man would never get anywhere in this country, I think. It's never been tried, anyway. This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when the real fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around. And the result of this of course is that the politician must give an answer. And the result of this is that political promises can never be kept. It is a mechanical fact; it is impossible. The result of that is that nobody believes campaign promises. And the result of that is a general disparaging of politics, a general lack of respect for the people who are trying to solve problems, and so forth. It's all generated from the very beginning (maybe - this is a simple analysis). It's all generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to find the answer instead of trying to find a man who has a way of getting at the answer.”

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Richard Feynman libro The Meaning of It All

lecture III: "This Unscientific Age"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

“If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell "friend," I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend.”

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Richard Feynman libro The Meaning of It All

lecture III: "This Unscientific Age"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

“…I don't believe in the idea that there are a few peculiar people capable of understanding math and the rest of the world is normal. Math is a human discovery, and it's no more complicated than humans can understand. I had a calculus book once that said, "What one fool can do, another fool can." What we've been able to work out about nature may look abstract and threatening to someone who hasn't studied it, but it was fools who did it, and in the next generation, all the fools will understand it. There's a tendency to pomposity in all this, to make it all deep and profound…”

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Richard Feynman libro The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

From Omni interview, "The Smartest Man in the World" (1979) or from the book p. 194.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

“…In that same period there was Newton, there was Harvey studying the circulation of the blood, there were people with methods of analysis by which progress was being made! You can take every one of Spinoza's propositions and take the contrary propositions and look at the world--and you can't tell which is right. Sure, people were awed because he had the courage to take on these great questions, but it doesn't do any good to have the courage if you can't get anywhere with the question…”

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Richard Feynman libro The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

From Omni interview, "The Smartest Man in the World" (1979) or from the book p. 195.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

“I had too much stuff. My machines came from too far away.”

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Richard Feynman

Reflecting on the failure of his presentation at the "Pocono Conference" of 30 March - 1 April 1948.
interview with Sylvan S. Schweber, 13 November 1984, published in QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (1994) by Silvan S. Schweber, p. 436

“A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.”

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Richard Feynman

"The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics," Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html (11 December 1965)

“And this is medicine?”

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Richard Feynman

Comment to psychiatrist who examines Feynman and states he (the psychiatrist) has studied medicine.
Part 3: "Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military", "Uncle Sam Doesn't Need <u>You</u>", p. 159
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

“This dying is boring.”

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Richard Feynman

last words (15 February 1988), recalled by sister Joan Feynman, in Christopher Sykes, editor, No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1994), p. 254

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.”

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Richard Feynman

on his blackboard at the time of death in February 1988; from a photo in the Caltech archives http://archives.caltech.edu/pictures/1.10-29.jpg

“Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it.I learned a way of expressing this common human problem on a trip to Honolulu. In a Buddhist temple there, the man in charge explained a little bit about the Buddhist religion for tourists, and then ended his talk by telling them he had something to say to them that they would never forget — and I have never forgotten it. It was a proverb of the Buddhist religion:To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.What then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that enable us to determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use.But the key obviously has value: how can we enter heaven without it?”

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Richard Feynman

The Value of Science (1955)

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.Pure mathematics is just such an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.”

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Richard Feynman

" New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14
Paraphrased as "Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem."

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know?”

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Richard Feynman libro The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
from lecture "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy (1964)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

“This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in — a trial and error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”

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Richard Feynman

The Value of Science (1955)

“But, in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel.”

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Richard Feynman

The Value of Science (1955)

“The philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”

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Richard Feynman

Attributed to Feynman, many times, by the British historian of science Brian Cox.
Disputed and/or attributed

“I, therefore, did learn a lesson: The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry. Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something. The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it.”

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Richard Feynman

address " What is Science? http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html", presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320

“Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, "But how can it be like that?"”

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Richard Feynman libro The Character of Physical Law

because you will get "down the drain", into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
Concerning the apparent absurdities of quantum behavior.
Origine: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 6, “Probability and Uncertainty — the Quantum Mechanical View of Nature,” p. 129

“What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.”

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Richard Feynman

Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.
volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it — the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics — the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual — the humility of the spirit.
These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God — more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?”

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Richard Feynman

remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm

“It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.”

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Richard Feynman libro The Meaning of It All

lecture II: "The Uncertainty of Values"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?"”

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Richard Feynman libro The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Origine: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere."”

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Richard Feynman

I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
volume I; lecture 3, "The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences"; section 3-4, "Astronomy"; p. 3-6
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what's good and what's bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty.”

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Richard Feynman

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong… I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”

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Richard Feynman

Origine: Curious Character

“If you want to master something, teach it. Teaching is a powerful tool for learning.”

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Richard Feynman

“…study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”

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Richard Feynman

excerpt from letter to J. M. Szabados (30 November 1965), quoted in "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track The Letters of Richard P. Feynman" (2005) by Michelle Feynman and Carl Feynman, p. 206