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Doubt Is Clearly A Value In Science. It Is Important To Doubt And That The Doubt Is Not A Fearful Thing, But A Thing Of Great Value.
-Richard P. Feynman
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Doubt Is Clearly A

Richard P. Feynman
...
Doubt Is Clearly A Value In Science. It Is Important To Doubt And That The Doubt Is Not A Fearful Thing, But A Thing Of Great Value.

Understanding the Quote: "doubt is clearly a value in science. it is important to doubt..."

This quote by Richard P. Feynman reflects deeply on the theme of doubt. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Doubt, Important, Fearful, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Richard P. Feynman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Richard P. Feynman

Richard P. Feynman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on doubt and important. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Doubt
Important
Fearful
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Missing
Research
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Trying
Way
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There Are 10^11 Stars In The Galaxy. That Used To Be A Huge Number. But It's Only A Hundred Billion. It's Less Than The National Deficit! We Used To Call Them Astronomical Numbers. Now We Should Call Them Economical Numbers.
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Learning
Science
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Smart
Science
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When A Caltech Student Asked The Eminent Cosmologist Michael Turner What His "bias" Was In Favoring One Or Another Particle As A Likely Candidate To Compromise Dark Matter In The Universe, Feynmann Snapped, "why Do You Want To Know His Bias? Form Your Own Bias!"
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Want
It Is Not Unscientific To Make A Guess, Although Many People Who Are Not In Science Think It Is.
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People
The Idea Is To Try To Give All The Information To Help Others To Judge The Value Of Your Contribution; Not Just The Information That Leads To Judgment In One Particular Direction Or Another.
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Ideas
Giving
If You Can Find Any Other View Of The World Which Agrees Over The Entire Range Where Things Have Already Been Observed, But Disagrees Somewhere Else, You Have Made A Great Discovery.
Discovery
Views
Somewhere Else
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People May Come Along And Argue Philosophically That They Like One Better Than Another; But We Have Learned From Much Experience That All Philosophical Intuitions About What Nature Is Going To Do Fail.
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Inspirational
Motivational
Education
If There Is Something Very Slightly Wrong In Our Definition Of The Theories, Then The Full Mathematical Rigor May Convert These Errors Into Ridiculous Conclusions.
Science
Errors
May
All Mass Is Interaction.
Mass
Interaction
I'm Smart Enough To Know That I'm Dumb.
Smart
Grace
Dumb
I'd Hate To Die Twice. It's So Boring.
Hate
Bad Ass
Boring
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?
Stars
Science
Night
Words Can Be Meaningless. If They Are Used In Such A Way That No Sharp Conclusions Can Be Drawn.
Way
Used
Conclusion
No Government Has The Right To Decide On The Truth Of Scientific Principles, Nor To Prescribe In Any Way The Character Of The Questions Investigated. Neither May A Government Determine The Aesthetic Value Of Artistic Creations, Nor Limit The Forms Of Literacy Or Artistic Expression. Nor Should It Pronounce On The Validity Of Economic, Historic, Religious, Or Philosophical Doctrines. Instead It Has A Duty To Its Citizens To Maintain The Freedom, To Let Those Citizens Contribute To The Further Adventure And The Development Of The Human Race.
Religious
Philosophical
Character
I Think It's Much More Interesting To Live Not Knowing Than To Have Answers Which Might Be Wrong.
Badass
Knowledge
Science
No Problem Is Too Small Or Too Trivial If We Can Really Do Something About It.
Problem
No Problem
Ifs
It Is Our Responsibility As Scientists, Knowing The Great Progress Which Comes From A Satisfactory Philosophy Of Ignorance, The Great Progress Which Is The Fruit Of Freedom Of Thought, To Proclaim The Value Of This Freedom; To Teach How Doubt Is Not To Be Feared But Welcomed And Discussed; And To Demand This Freedom As Our Duty To All Coming Generations.
Freedom
Philosophy
Responsibility
Don't Worry About Anything. Go Out And Have A Good Time.
Worry
Anything Goes
Good Times
To Those Who Do Not Know Mathematics It Is Difficult To Get Across A Real Feeling As To The Beauty, The Deepest Beauty, Of Nature ... If You Want To Learn About Nature, To Appreciate Nature, It Is Necessary To Understand The Language That She Speaks In.
Nature
Real
Learning
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.
Life
Thinking
Good Things
Computer Science Is Not As Old As Physics; It Lags By A Couple Of Hundred Years. However, This Does Not Mean That There Is Significantly Less On The Computer Scientist's Plate Than On The Physicist's: Younger It May Be, But It Has Had A Far More Intense Upbringing!
Couple
Mean
Years
Agnostic For Me Would Be Trying To Weasel Out And Sound A Little Nicer Than I Am About This.
Trying
Sound
Would Be
What Is Not Surrounded By Uncertainty Cannot Be The Truth.
Uncertainty
The Basis Of Action On Love, The Brotherhood Of All Men, The Value Of The Individual... The Humility Of The Spirit.
Humility
Pride
Men
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 Compartmentaliz Ation Is Really Artificial, And We Should Take Our Intellectual Pleasures Where We Find Them.
Real
Cutting
Order
The Quantum Universe Has A Quotation From Me In Every Chapter - But It's A Damn Good Book Anyway.
Book
Quantum
Chapters
There Is No Learning Without Having To Pose A Question. And A Question Requires Doubt.
Doubt
No Doubt
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 Uncertainty About Different Things, But I Am 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?" 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.
Mean
Humility
Acceptance
I Learned From Her That Every Woman Is Worried About Her Looks, No Matter How Beautiful She Is.
Beautiful
Looks
Matter
The World Is A Dynamic Mess Of Jiggling Things
World
Mess
I Have Argued Flying Saucers With Lots Of People. I Was Interested In Possible. They Do Not Appreciate That The Problem Is Not To Demonstrate Whether It's Possible Or Not But Whether It's Going On Or Not.
People
Appreciate
Flying
Strange! I Don't Understand How It Is That We Can Write Mathematical Expressions And Calculate What The Thing Is Going To Do Without Being Able To Picture It.
Writing
Expression
Able
Fall In Love With Some Activity, And Do It! 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. Work As Hard And As Much As You Want To On The Things You Like To Do The Best. Don't Think About What You Want To Be, But What You Want To Do. Keep Up Some Kind Of A Minimum With Other Things So That Society Doesn't Stop You From Doing Anything At All.
Falling In Love
Thinking
Interesting
If An Apple Was Magnified To The Size Of The Earth, Then The Atoms In The Apple Would Be Approximately The Size Of The Original Apple.
Apples
Atoms
Would Be
The First Principle Is That You Must Not Fool Yourself And You Are The Easiest Person To Fool.
Clever
Love Life
Science
Science Alone Of All The Subjects Contains Within Itself The Lesson Of The Danger Of Belief In The Infallibility Of The Greatest Teachers Of The Preceding Generation.
Faith
Teacher
Generations
... It Is Impossible To Explain Honestly The Beauties Of The Laws Of Nature In A Way That People Can Feel, Without Their Having Some Deep Understanding Of Mathematics. I Am Sorry, But This Seems To Be The Case.
Sorry
Science
Law
In A Way, The Nobel Prize Has Been Something Of A Pain In The Neck, Though There Was At Least One Time That I Got Some Fun Out Of It, Shortly After I Won The Prize, Gweneth And I Received An Invitation From The Brazilian Government To Be The Guests Of Honor At The Carnaval Celebrations In Rio.
Fun
Pain
Government
Few People Realize The Number Of Things That Are Possible.
Numbers
People
Realizing
When The Problem [quantum Chromodynamics] Is Finally Solved, It Will All Be By Imagination. Then There Will Be Some Big Thing About The Great Way It Was Done. But It's Simple -it Will All Be By Imagination, And Persistence.
Learning
Persistence
Simple
Therefore Psychologically We Must Keep All The Theories In Our Heads, And Every Theoretical Physicist Who Is Any Good Knows Six Or Seven Different Theoretical Representations For Exactly The Same Physics.
Different
Six
Physics
This Is Not Very Important What I'm Doing. I'm Just Proving Something.
Science
Important
Mathematics
The Female Mind Is Capable Of Understanding Analytic Geometry... 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.
Understanding
Mind
Female
The Problem Of Creating Something New, But Which Is Consistent With Everything Which Has Been Seen Before, Is One Of Extreme Difficulty.
Creating
Problem
Something New
You Know How It Always Is, Every New Idea, It Takes A Generation Or Two Until It Becomes Obvious That There's No Real Problem. It Has Not Yet Become Obvious To Me That There's No Real Problem. I Cannot Define The Real Problem, Therefore I Suspect There's No Real Problem, But I'm Not Sure There's No Real Problem.
Real
Ideas
Two
Science Is Uncertain.
Uncertain
There Are Thousands Of Years In The Past, And There Is An Unknown Amount Of Time In The Future. There Are All Kinds Of Opportunities, And There Are All Kinds Of Dangers.
Past
Opportunity
Years
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.
Thinking
Incomplete Knowledge
People
If Science Is To Progress, What We Need Is The Ability To Experiment, Honesty In Reporting Results—the Results Must Be Reported Without Somebody Saying What They Would Like The Results To Have Been—and Finally—an Important Thing—the Intelligence To Interpret The Results.
Honesty
Intelligence
Important
Start Out Understanding Religion By Saying Everything Is Possibly Wrong... As Soon As You Do That, You Start Sliding Down An Edge Which Is Hard To Recover From.
Understanding
Religion
Atheism
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.
Science
Views
Law
John Von Neumann Gave Me An Interesting Idea: That You Don't Have To Be Responsible For The World That You're In. So I Have Developed A Very Powerful Sense Of Social Irresponsibility As A Result Of Von Neumann's Advice. It's Made Me A Very Happy Man Ever Since. But It Was Von Neumann Who Put The Seed In That Grew Into My Active Irresponsibility!
Powerful
Men
Ideas
Science Is A Process For Learning About Nature In Which Competing Ideas About How The World Works Are Measured Against Observations.
Ideas
World
Process
There's Plenty Of Room At The Bottom.
Rooms
Bottom
Plenty
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.
Math
Science
Mind
Tell Your Son To Stop Trying To Fill Your Head With Science - For To Fill Your Heart With Love Is Enough!
Life
Heart
Son
I Would Rather Have Questions That Can't Be Answered Than Answers That Can't Be Questioned.
Answers
I Love Only Nature, And I Hate Mathematicians.
Hate
Science
I Hate
The Unanswerable Mysteries... The Attitude That All Is Uncertain... To Summarize It - The Humility Of The Intellect.
Attitude
Humility
Pride
We Need To Teach How Doubt Is Not To Be Feared But Welcomed. It's Ok To Say, "i Don't Know."
Learning
Doubt
Needs
Science Is Like Sex: Sometimes Something Useful Comes Out, But That Is Not The Reason We Are Doing It
Inspirational
Funny
Sex
Philosophy Of Science Is About As Useful To Scientists As Ornithology Is To Birds.
Philosophy
Science
Engineering
During The Middle Ages There Were All Kinds Of Crazy Ideas, Such As That A Piece Of Rhinoceros Horn Would Increase Potency. Then A Method Was Discovered For Separating The Ideas - Which Was To Try One To See If It Worked, And If It Didn't Work, To Eliminate It. This Method Became Organized, Of Course, Into Science.
Crazy
Ideas
Religion
To Test Whether You Have Learned An Idea Or A Definition, Rephrase What You Just Learned Without Using The New Word.
Ideas
Definitions
Tests
From A Long View Of The History Of Mankind The Most Significant Event Of The Nineteenth Century Will Be Judged As Maxwell's Discovery Of The Laws Of Electrodynamics.
Discovery
Views
Law
The "paradox" Is Only A Conflict Between Reality And Your Feeling Of What Reality "ought To Be."
Reality
Feelings
Conflict
[quantum Mechanics] Describes Nature As Absurd From The Point Of View Of Common Sense. And Yet It Fully Agrees With Experiment. So I Hope You Can Accept Nature As She Is - Absurd.
Views
Common Sense
Religion
We Decided That 'trivial' Means 'proved'. So We Joked With The Mathematicians: We Have A New Theorem- That Mathematicians Can Prove Only Trivial Theorems, Because Every Theorem That's Proved Is Trivial.
Mean
Science
Mathematics
Scientific Knowledge Is A Body Of Statements Of Varying Degrees Of Certainty -- Some Most Unsure, Some Nearly Sure, None Absolutely Certain.
Degrees
Body
Absolute Certainty
It Is The Facts That Matter, Not The Proofs. Physics Can Progress Without The Proofs, But We Can't Go On Without The Facts ... If The Facts Are Right, Then The Proofs Are A Matter Of Playing Around With The Algebra Correctly.
Science
Progress
Goes On
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