Rei. > Rei. 's Quotes

“I do not believe in scenery but still, there it is.”
― Joe Dunthorne, Submarine

“Everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough”
― Richard Feynman

“I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“That’s the trouble with not being in your own field: You don’t take it seriously.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.”
― Richard Feynman

“I have no responsibility to live up to what others expect of me. That's their mistake, not my failing.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“How I'm rushing through this! How much each sentence in this brief story contains. "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." 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 imagina-tion—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part—perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. 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 like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

“The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”
― Richard Feynman

“anything can happen, in spite of what you’re pretty sure should happen.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

“You have to have absolute confidence. Keep right on going, and nothing will happen.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens they get interested in this thing and they learn all this stuff, but they’re just people.”
― Richard Feynman

“Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, “Is it reasonable?”)”
― Richard Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?" - all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life.”
― Richard P. Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is 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? 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.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

“We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries. ”
― Richard Feynmann

“You see, one thing is, 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 and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. 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 a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Some people say, How can you live without knowing? I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“the whole problem of discovering what was the matter, and figuring out what you have to do to fix it–that was interesting to me, like a puzzle”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“You keep on learning and learning, and pretty soon you learn something no one has learned before.”
― Richard Feynman

“Keep an open mind - but not so open that your brain falls out.”
― Richard Feynman

“I don't mind not knowing. It doesn't scare me.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“I learned how to look at life in a way that’s different from the way it is where I come from.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character

“Of course, I am interested, but I would not dare to talk about them. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“I have a serious affliction: loving you forever.

[Letter to Arline Feynman]”
― Richard Feynman

“that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.”
― Richard P. Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character