Quotes by Richard P. Feynman

“I have a friend whos an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I dont agree with very well. Hell hold up a flower and say look how beautiful it is, and Ill agree. Then he says I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing, and I think that hes kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean its not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; theres also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I dont understand how it subtracts.”

“But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.”

“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.”

“Physics isnt the most important thing. Love is.”

“It doesnt seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when youre finished, youll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So lets look at the bird and see what its doing — thats what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”

“I have no responsibility to live up to what others expect of me. Thats their mistake, not my failing.”

“I happen to know this, and I happen to know that, and maybe I know that;and I work everything out from there. Tomorrow I may forgot that this is true, but remember that something else is true, so I can reconstruct it all again. I am never quite sure of where I am supposed to begin or where I am supposed to end. I just remember enough all the time so that as the memory fades and some of the pieces fall out I can put the thing back together again every day”

“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 be silent?”