Background Image
...
I Think It's Much More Interesting To Live Not Knowing Than To Have Answers Which Might Be Wrong.
-Richard P. Feynman
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

I Think It's Much

Richard P. Feynman
...
I Think It's Much More Interesting To Live Not Knowing Than To Have Answers Which Might Be Wrong.

Understanding the Quote: "i think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to..."

This quote by Richard P. Feynman reflects deeply on the theme of badass. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Badass, Knowledge, Science, 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 badass and knowledge. 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.

Views: 92376
Topic
Badass
Knowledge
Science
More From Richard P. Feynman
The Test Of All Knowledge Is Experiment.
Tests
Experiments
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 .
Honesty
Integrity
Real
You Have No Responsibility To Live Up To What Other People Think You Ought To Accomplish. I Have No Responsibility To Be Like They Expect Me To Be. It's Their Mistake, Not My Failing.
Life
Confidence
Powerful
All Theoretical Chemistry Is Really Physics; And All Theoretical Chemists Know It.
Chemistry
Physics
Knows
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.
Running
Errors
Government
A Poet Once Said, "the Whole Universe Is In A Glass Of Wine." We Will Probably Never Know In What Sense He Meant That, For Poets Do Not Write To Be Understood... How Vivid Is The Claret, Pressing Its Existence Into The Consciousness That Watches It! If Our Small Minds, For Some Convenience, Divide This Glass Of Wine, This Universe, Into Parts - Physics, Biology, Geology, Astronomy, Psychology, And So On - Remember That Nature Does Not Know It! So Let Us Put It All Back Together, Not Forgetting Ultimately What It Is For. Let It Give Us One More Final Pleasure: Drink It And Forget It All!
Writing
Wine
Glasses
It Is Not Unscientific To Make A Guess, Although Many People Who Are Not In Science Think It Is.
Thinking
People
It Is Important To Realize That In Physics Today, We Have No Knowledge Of What Energy Is
Important
Energy
Today
I Always Do That, Get Into Something And See How Far I Can Go.
I Can
Few People Realize The Number Of Things That Are Possible.
Numbers
People
Realizing
I'm Going To Play With Physics, Whenever I Want To, Without Worrying About Any Importance Whatsoever.
Play
Worry
Want
We Have Found It Of Paramount Importance That In Order To Progress, We Must Recognize Our Ignorance And Leave Room For Doubt.
Ignorance
Order
Doubt
Energy Is A Very Subtle Concept. It Is Very, Very Difficult To Get Right.
Energy
Subtle
Difficult
No Problem Is Too Small Or Too Trivial If We Can Really Do Something About It.
Problem
No Problem
Ifs
I Think Nature's Imagination Is So Much Greater Than Man's, She's Never Gonna Let Us Relax!
Men
Thinking
Imagination
No Man Is Rich Who Is Unsatisfied, But Who Wants Nothing Possess His Heart's Desire.
Heart
Men
Desire
I Think It's Much More Interesting To Live Not Knowing Than To Have Answers Which Might Be Wrong.
Badass
Knowledge
Science
Science Is A Process For Learning About Nature In Which Competing Ideas About How The World Works Are Measured Against Observations.
Ideas
World
Process
Don't Pay Attention To "authorities," Think For Yourself.
Thinking
Attention
Pay
Know Your Place In The World And Evaluate Yourself Fairly, Not In Terms Of The Naïve Ideals Of Your Own Youth, Nor In Terms Of What You Erroneously Imagine Your Teacher's Ideals Are.
Teacher
World
Youth
People Who Wish To Analyze Nature Without Using Mathematics Must Settle For A Reduced Understanding.
People
Understanding
Wish
Just As A Poet Often Has License From The Rules Of Grammar And Pronunciation, We Should Like To Ask For 'physicists' License From The Rules Of Mathematics In Order To Express What We Wish To Say In As Simple A Manner As Possible.
Simple
Order
Wish
When A Scientist Doesn't Know The Answer To A Problem, He Is Ignorant. When He Has A Hunch As To What The Result Is, He Is Uncertain. And When He Is Pretty Darn Sure Of What The Result Is Going To Be, He Is Still In Some Doubt. We Have Found It Of Paramount Importance That In Order To Progress We Must Recognize Our Ignorance And Leave Room For Doubt. Scientific Knowledge Is A Body Of Statements Of Varying Degrees Of Certainty - Some Most Unsure, Some Nearly Sure, But None Absolutely Certain.
Ignorance
Order
Ignorant
Physics Is Like Sex: Sure, It May Give Some Practical Results, But That's Not Why We Do It.
Sex
Learning
Science
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
Scientific Knowledge Is An Enabling Power To Do Either Good Or Bad — But It Does Not Carry Instructions On How To Use It.
Doe
Use
Enabling
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
Doubt
Progress
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
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
It Is To Be Emphasized That No Matter How Many [amplitude] Arrows We Draw, Add, Or Multiply, Our Objective Is To Calculate A Single Final Arrow For The Event . Mistakes Are Often Made By Physics Students At First Because They Do Not Keep This Important Point In Mind. They Work For So Long Analyzing Events Involving A Single Photon That They Begin To Think That The Arrow Is Somehow Associated With The Photon [rather Than With The Event].
Mistake
Thinking
Arrows
But See That The Imagination Of Nature Is Far, Far Greater Than The Imagination Of Man.
Nature
Men
Imagination
Work As Hard And As Much As You Want To On The Things You Like To Do The Best.
Work
Want
Things You Like
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
Observation, Reason, And Experiment Make Up What We Call The Scientific Method.
Scientific Method
Reason
Observation
There Are Theoretical Physicists Who Imagine, Deduce, And Guess At New Laws, But Do Not Experiment; And Then There Are Experimental Physicists Who Experiment, Imagine, Deduce, And Guess.
Law
Imagine
Physicist
To Not Know Math Is A Severe Limitation To Understanding The World.
Beer
Math
Understanding
You Can Always Recognize Truth By Its Beauty And Simplicity.
Simplicity
If We Will Only Allow That, As We Progress, We Remain Unsure, We Will Leave Opportunities For Alternatives.
Science
Opportunity
Progress
If You Know That You Are Not Sure, You Have A Chance To Improve The Situation. I Want To Demand This Freedom For Future Generations.
Generations
Demand
Want
It Does Not Matter Who You Are, Or How Smart You Are, Or What Title You Have, Or How Many Of You There Are, And Certainly Not How Many Papers Your Side Has Published, If Your Prediction Is Wrong Then Your Hypothesis Is Wrong. Period.
Smart
Your Side
Matter
Nature Uses Only The Longest Threads To Weave Her Patterns, So That Each Small Piece Of Her Fabric Reveals The Organization Of The Entire Tapestry.
Uplifting
Wisdom
Nature
When I Found Out That Santa Claus Wasn't Real, I Wasn't Upset; Rather, I Was Relieved That There Was A Much Simpler Phenomenon To Explain How So Many Children All Over The World Got Presents On The Same Night! The Story Had Been Getting Pretty Complicated -- It Was Getting Out Of Hand.
Children
Real
Night
Listen, I Mean That From My Knowledge Of The World That I See Around Me, I Think That It Is Much More Likely That The Reports Of Flying Saucers Are The Results Of The Known Irrational Characteristics Of Terrestrial Intelligence Than Of The Unknown Rational Efforts Of Extra-terrestrial Intelligence.
Mean
Thinking
Effort
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
We've Learned From Experience That The Truth Will Out.
Truth Will Come Out
This Is Not Yet A Scientific Age.
Age
You Can Recognize Truth By Its Beauty And Simplicity. When You Get It Right, It Is Obvious That It Is Right -- At Least If You Have Any Experience -- Because Usually What Happens Is That More Comes Out Than Goes In.
Truth
Simplicity
Obvious
[b]eyond Poverty, Beyond The Point That The Material Needs Are Reasonably Satisfied, Only From Within Is Peace.
Needs
Poverty
Satisfied
Have No Respect Whatsoever For Authority; Forget Who Said It And Instead Look What He Starts With, Where He Ends Up, And Ask Yourself, "is It Reasonable?"
Looks
Physics
Forget
I Have A Friend Who's An Artist, And He Sometimes Takes A View Which I Don't Agree With. He'll Hold Up A Flower And Say, "look How Beautiful It Is," And I'll Agree. But Then He'll Say, "i, As An Artist, Can See How Beautiful A Flower Is. But You, As A Scientist, Take It All Apart And It Becomes Dull." I Think He's Kind Of Nutty. [...] There Are All Kinds Of Interesting Questions That Come From A Knowledge Of Science, Which Only Adds To The Excitement And Mystery And Awe Of A Flower. It Only Adds. I Don't Understand How It Subtracts.
Beautiful
Philosophy
Flower
The Chance Is High That The Truth Lies In The Fashionable Direction. But, On The Off-chance That It Is In Another Direction - A Direction Obvious From An Unfashionable View Of Field Theory - Who Will Find It? Only Someone Who Has Sacrificed Himself By Teaching Himself Quantum Electrodynamics From A Peculiar And Unusual Point Of View; One That He May Have To Invent For Himself.
Lying
Teaching
Views
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
I Don't Think That The Laws Can Be Considered To Be Like God Because They Have Been Figured Out.
Thinking
Law
Atheism
Light Is Something Like Raindrops Each Little Lump Of Light Is Called A Photon And If The Light Is All One Color, All The "raindrops" Are The Same.
Light
Color
Raindrops
Scientists Are Explorers. Philosophers Are Tourists.
Science
Tourists
Philosopher
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.
Science
Thinking
Doubt
We Can Deduce, Often, From One Part Of Physics Like The Law Of Gravitation, A Principle Which Turns Out To Be Much More Valid Than The Derivation.
Law
Principles
Physics
Science Is Uncertain.
Uncertain
I Think We Can Safely Assume That No One Understands Quantum Mechanics.
Thinking
Assuming
Mechanic
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Thinking
People
Care
All Things Are Made Of Atoms - Little Particles That Move Around In Perpetual Motion, Attracting Each Other When They Are A Little Distance Apart, But Repelling Upon Being Squeezed Into One Another. In That One Sentence, You Will See, There Is An Enormous Amount Of Information About The World, If Just A Little Imagination And Thinking Are Applied.
Distance
Moving
Knowledge
Physics Is Not The Most Important Thing. Love Is.
Science
Technology
Love Is
Thank You Very Much, I Enjoyed Myself
Funny
Enjoyed
When A Photon Comes Down, It Interacts With Electrons Throughout The Glass, Not Just On The Surface. The Photon And Electrons Do Some Kind Of Dance, The Net Result Of Which Is The Same As If The Photon Hit Only On The Surface.
Glasses
Kind
Results
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
Today's Brains Are Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes.
Yesterday
Brain
Today
We Have This Terrible Struggle To Try To Explain Things To People Who Have No Reason To Want To Know.
Struggle
Communication
People
We Have Been Led To Imagine All Sorts Of Things Infinitely More Marvelous Than The Imagining Of Poets And Dreamers Of The Past. It Shows That The Imagination Of Nature Is Far, Far Greater Than The Imagination Of Man. For Instance, How Much More Remarkable It Is For Us All To Be Stuck-half Of Us Upside Down-by A Mysterious Attraction, To A Spinning Ball That Has Been Swinging In Space For Billions Of Years, Than To Be Carried On The Back Of An Elephant Supported On A Tortoise Swimming In A Bottomless Sea.
Swimming
Men
Past
Everybody Who Reasons Carefully About Anything Is Making A Contribution ... And If You Abstract It Away And Send It To The Department Of Mathematics They Put It In Books.
Book
Reason
Mathematics
The Shell Game That We Play ... Is Technically Called 'renormalization'. But No Matter How Clever The Word, It Is Still What I Would Call A Dippy Process! Having To Resort To Such Hocus-pocus Has Prevented Us From Proving That The Theory Of Quantum Electrodynamics Is Mathematically Self-consistent. It's Surprising That The Theory Still Hasn't Been Proved Self-consistent One Way Or The Other By Now; I Suspect That Renormalization Is Not Mathematically Legitimate.
Clever
Self
Games
A Very Great Deal More Truth Can Become Known Than Can Be Proven.
Knowledge
Deals
Known
Progress In Science Comes When Experiments Contradict Theory.
Science
Progress
Theory
The Scale Of Light Can Be Described By Numbers Called The Frequency And As The Numbers Get Higher, The Light Goes From Red To Blue To Ultraviolet. We Can't See Ultraviolet Light, But It Can Affect Photographic Plates. It's Still Light Only The Number Is Different.
Light
Blue
Numbers
For Far More Marvelous Is The Truth Than Any Artists Of The Past Imagined It. 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?
Artist
Past
Men
I Was Born Not Knowing And Have Had Only A Little Time To Change That Here And There.
Inspirational
Change
Education
The First Principle Is That You Must Not Fool Yourself And You Are The Easiest Person To Fool.
Clever
Love Life
Science
I Don't Like Honors. I'm Appreciated For The Work That I Did, And For People Who Appreciate It, And I Notice That Other Physicists Use My Work. I Don't Need Anything Else. I Don't Think There's Any Sense To Anything Else.... I've Already Got The Prize. The Prize Is The Pleasure Of Finding The Thing Out, The Kick In The Discovery, The Observation That Other People Use It. Those Are The Real Things. The Honors Are Unreal To Me. I Don't Believe In Honors... I Can't Stand It, It Hurts Me.
Hurt
Real
Believe
I Don't Know What's The Matter With People: They Don't Learn By Understanding, They Learn By Some Other Way — By Rote Or Something. Their Knowledge Is So Fragile!
Inspirational
People
Understanding
Experiment Is The Sole Judge Of The Validity Of Any Idea.
Ideas
Judging
Sole
When A Scientist Doesn't Know The Answer To A Problem, He Is Ignorant. When He Has A Hunch As To What The Result Is, He Is Uncertain. And When He Is Pretty Darn Sure Of What The Result Is Going To Be, He Is In Some Doubt.
Doubt
Ignorant
Answers
But Logic Is Not All, One Needs One's Heart To Follow An Idea.
Heart
Ideas
Needs
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
So Far As We Know, All The Fundamental Laws Of Physics, Like Newton's Equations, Are Reversible.
Law
Fundamentals
Physics
It Is Our Responsibility To Leave The People Of The Future A Free Hand.
Responsibility
Hands
People
I Am Not Interested In What Today's Mathematicians Find Interesting.
Interesting
Today
Mathematician
It Does Not Make Any Difference How Beautiful Your Guess Is. It Does Not Make Any Difference How Smart You Are, Who Made The Guess, Or What His Name Is If It Disagrees With Experiment It Is Wrong. That Is All There Is To It.
Beautiful
Smart
Names
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.
Order
People
Worst Times
For A Successful Technology, Reality Must Take Precedence Over Public Relations, For Nature Cannot Be Fooled.
Inspirational
Nature
Science
In Its Efforts To Learn As Much As Possible About Nature, Modern Physics Has Found That Certain Things Can Never Be "known" With Certainty. Much Of Our Knowledge Must Always Remain Uncertain. The Most We Can Know Is In Terms Of Probabilities.
Effort
Physics
Modern
Some People Think Wheeler's Gotten Crazy In His Later Years, But He's Always Been Crazy.
Crazy
Thinking
Years
The Fundamental Principle Of Science, The Definition Almost, Is This: The Sole Test Of The Validity Of Any Idea Is Experiment.
Ideas
Principles
Fundamentals
The Difficulty Really Is Psychological And Exists In The Perpetual Torment That Results From Your Saying To Yourself, "but How Can It Be Like That?" Which Is A Reflection Of Uncontrolled But Utterly Vain Desire To See It In Terms Of Something Familiar. ... If You Will Simply Admit That Maybe Nature Does Behave Like This, You Will Find Her A Delightful, Entrancing Thing. Do Not Keep Saying To Yourself, If You Can Possible Avoid It, "but How Can It Be Like That?" Because You Will Get 'down The Drain', Into A Blind Alley From Which Nobody Has Escaped. Nobody Knows How It Can Be Like That.
Science
Reflection
Desire
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.
Helping
Problem
Worthwhile
The Same Equations Have The Same Solutions
Equations
Solutions
What I Am Going To Tell You About Is What We Teach Our Physics Students In The Third Or Fourth Year Of Graduate School... It Is My Task To Convince You Not To Turn Away Because You Don't Understand It. You See My Physics Students Don't Understand It... That Is Because I Don't Understand It. Nobody Does.
Graduation
Learning
School
Ordinarily It Would Take Me About Fifteen Minutes To Get A Hallucination Going," Wrote Feynman, "but On A Few Occasions, When I Smoked Some Marijuana Beforehand, It Came Very Quickly.
Marijuana
Fifteen
Hallucinations
It Is The Fact That The Electrons Cannot All Get On Top Of Each Other That Makes Tables And Everything Else Solid.
Tables
Facts
Electrons
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
On The Contrary, It's Because Somebody Knows Something About It That We Can't Talk About Physics . It's The Things That Nobody Knows Anything About That We Can Discuss. We Can Talk About The Weather; We Can Talk About Social Problems; We Can Talk About Psychology; We Can Talk About International Finance Gold Transfers We Can't Talk About, Because Those Are Understood So It's The Subject That Nobody Knows Anything About That We Can All Talk About!
Weather
Psychology
Gold
I Don't Like Honors. ... I've Already Got The Prize: The Prize Is The Pleasure Of Finding The Thing Out, The Kick In The Discovery, The Observation That Other People Use It. Those Are The Real Things.
Real
Discovery
People
The First Principle Is That You Must Not Fool Yourself—and You Are The Easiest Person To Fool. So You Have To Be Very Careful About That. After You’ve Not Fooled Yourself, It’s Easy Not To Fool Other Scientists. You Just Have To Be Honest In A Conventional Way After That.
Principles
Way
Fool
Nature Does Not Care What We Call It, She Just Keeps On Doing It.
Doe
Care
It Doesn't 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.
Atheist
Drama
Struggle
I Am Going To Tell You What Nature Behaves Like. If You Will Simply Admit That Maybe She Does Behave Like This, You Will Find Her A Delightful, Entrancing Thing. Do Not Keep Saying To Yourself, If You Can Possibly Avoid It, 'but How Can It Be Like That?' ...nobody Knows How It Can Be Like That.
Science
Doe
Physics
Every Instrument That Has Been Designed To Be Sensitive Enough To Detect Weak Light Has Always Ended Up Discovering That The Same Thing: Light Is Made Of Particles.
Light
Sensitive
Enough
Everything Is Made Of Atoms.
Atoms
Made
I Was Terrible In English. I Couldn't Stand The Subject. It Seemed To Me Ridiculous To Worry About Whether You Spelled Something Wrong Or Not, Because English Spelling Is Just A Human Convention--it Has Nothing To Do With Anything Real, Anything From Nature. Any Word Can Be Spelled Just As Well A Different Way.
Real
Worry
Different
To Develop Working Ideas Efficiently, I Try To Fail As Fast As I Can.
Failure
Ideas
Trying
I, A Universe Of Atoms, An Atom In The Universe.
Atoms
Cosmology
Universe
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
One Of The Ways Of Stopping Science Would Be Only To Do Experiments In The Region Where You Know The Law. But Experimenters Search Most Diligently, And With The Greatest Effort, In Exactly Those Places Where It Seems Most Likely That We Can Prove Our Theories Wrong. In Other Words, We Are Trying To Prove Ourselves Wrong As Quickly As Possible, Because Only In That Way Can We Find Progress.
Discovery
Law
Effort
If We Want To Solve A Problem That We Have Never Solved Before, We Must Leave The Door To The Unknown Ajar.
Learning
Science
Doors
What Is The Fundamental Hypothesis Of Science, The Fundamental Philosophy? We Stated It In The First Chapter: The Sole Test Of The Validity Of Any Idea Is Experiment. ... If We Are Told That The Same Experiment Will Always Produce The Same Result, That Is All Very Well, But If When We Try It, It Does Not, Then It Does Not. We Just Have To Take What We See, And Then Formulate All The Rest Of Our Ideas In Terms Of Our Actual Experience.
Philosophy
Math
Ideas
First You Guess. Don't Laugh, This Is The Most Important Step. Then You Compute The Consequences. Compare The Consequences To Experience. If It Disagrees With Experience, The Guess Is Wrong. In That Simple Statement Is The Key To Science. It Doesn't Matter How Beautiful Your Guess Is Or How Smart You Are Or What Your Name Is. If It Disagrees With Experience, It's Wrong. That's All There Is To It.
Beautiful
Smart
Science
There Is One Simplification At Least. Electrons Behave ... In Exactly The Same Way As Photons; They Are Both Screwy, But In Exactly In The Same Way.
Way
Behave
Electrons
The Most Important Thing I Found Out From My Father Is That If You Asked Any Question And Pursued It Deeply Enough, Then At The End There Was A Glorious Discovery Of A General And Beautiful Kind.
Beautiful
Father
Discovery
Winning A Nobel Prize Is No Big Deal, But Winning It With An Iq Of 124 Is Really Something.
Winning
Bigs
Nobel
It Is Scientific Only To Say What Is More Likely And What Less Likely, And Not To Be Proving All The Time The Possible And Impossible.
Possible And Impossible
Impossible
Prove
The Highest Forms Of Understanding We Can Achieve Are Laughter And Human Compassion.
Laughter
Inspiration
Compassion
A Philosopher Once Said, 'it Is Necessary For The Very Existence Of Science That The Same Conditions Always Produce The Same Results.' Well, They Don't!
Philosopher
Quantum
Results
I Learned Very Early The Difference Between Knowing The Name Of Something And Knowing Something.
Inspirational
Motivational
Education
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
If You Thought You Were Trying To Find Out More About It Because You're Gonna Get An Answer To Some Deep Philosophical Question...you May Be Wrong! It May Be That You Can't Get An Answer To That Particular Question By Finding Out More About The Character Of Nature. But My Interest In Science Is To Simply Find Out About The World.
Philosophical
Character
Trying
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.
Interesting
World
Matter
When You Get As Old As I Am, You Start To Realize That You've Told Most Of The Good Stuff You Know To Other People Anyway.
People
Stuff
Realizing
To Test Whether You Have Learned An Idea Or A Definition, Rephrase What You Just Learned Without Using The New Word.
Ideas
Definitions
Tests
The Electron Is A Theory. But The Theory Is So Good We Can Almost Consider Them Real.
Real
Theory
Electrons
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
You Say You Are A Nameless Man. You Are Not To Your Wife And To Your Child. You Will Not Long Remain So To Your Immediate Colleagues If You Can Answer Their Simple Questions When They Come Into Your Office. You Are Not Nameless To Me. Do Not Remain Nameless To Yourself — It Is Too Sad A Way To Be. Know Your Place In The World And Evaluate Yourself Fairly, Not In Terms Of The Naïve Ideals Of Your Own Youth, Nor In Terms Of What You Erroneously Imagine Your Teacher's Ideals Are.
Teacher
Children
Simple
Our Responsibility Is To Do What We Can, Learn What We Can, Improve The Solutions, And Pass Them On.
Responsibility
Unreasonable
Human Race
Scientific Views End In Awe And Mystery, Lost At The Edge In Uncertainty, But They Appear To Be So Deep And So Impressive That The Theory That It Is All Arranged As A Stage For God To Watch Man's Struggle For Good And Evil Seems Inadequate.
Fear
Struggle
Men
Work Hard To Find Something That Fascinates You.
Hard Work
Hard
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
Victory Usually Goes To Those Green Enough To Underestimate The Monumental Hurdles They Are Facing.
Victory
Green
Underestimate
The Work I Have Done Has, Already, Been Adequately Rewarded And Recognized. Imagination Reaches Out Repeatedly Trying To Achieve Some Higher Level Of Understanding, Until Suddenly I Find Myself Momentarily Alone Before One New Corner Of Nature's Pattern Of Beauty And True Majesty Revealed. That Was My Reward.
Science
Imagination
Understanding
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.
Science
Opportunity
Thinking
By Honest I Don't Mean That You Only Tell What's True. But You Make Clear The Entire Situation. You Make Clear All The Information That Is Required For Somebody Else Who Is Intelligent To Make Up Their Mind.
Honesty
Mean
Intelligent
While I Am Describing To You How Nature Works, You Won't Understand Why Nature Works That Way. But You See, Nobody Understands That.
Way
Describing
Outside Of Their Particular Area Of Expertise Scientists Are Just As Dumb As The Next Person.
Dumb
Next
Scientist
Although It Is Uncertain, It Is Necessary To Make Science Useful. Science Is Only Useful If It Tells You About Some Experiment That Has Not Been Done; It Is Not Good If It Only Tells You What Just Went On.
Done
Uncertain
Experiments
There Is No Learning Without Having To Pose A Question. And A Question Requires Doubt.
Doubt
No Doubt
Science Is The Belief In The Ignorance Of Experts.
Ignorance
Science
Thinking
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.
Philosophical
People
Intuition
It Requires A Much Higher Degree Of Imagination To Understand The Electromagnetic Field Than To Understand Invisible Angels. ... I Speak Of The E And B Fields And Wave My Arms And You May Imagine That I Can See Them ... [but] I Cannot Really Make A Picture That Is Even Nearly Like The True Waves.
Angel
Imagination
Degrees
But The Real Glory Of Science Is That We Can Find A Way Of Thinking Such That The Law Is Evident.
Real
Science
Thinking
I Don't Feel Frightened By Not Knowing Things.
Mysterious Universe
Knowing
Frightened
We Cannot Define Anything Precisely. If We Attempt To, We Get Into The Paralysis Of Thought That Comes To Philosophers, Who Sit Opposite Each Other, One Saying To The Other, "you Don't Know What You Are Talking About!" The Second One Says, "what Do You Mean By Know? What Do You Mean By Talking? What Do You Mean By You?"
Mean
Talking
Philosopher
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
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
If A Guy Tells Me The Probability Of Failure Is 1 In 100,000, I Know He's Full Of Crap.
Guy
Probability
Crap
It Appears That There Are Enormous Differences Of Opinion As To The Probability Of A Failure With Loss Of Vehicle And Of Human Life. The Estimates Range From Roughly 1 In 100 To 1 In 100,000. The Higher Figures Come From The Working Engineers, And The Very Low Figures From Management.
Loss
Differences
Safety
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
Nature...cannot Be Fooled!
Fooled
Study Hard What Interests You The Most In The Most Undisciplined, Irreverent And Original Manner Possible.
Inspirational
Encouraging
Education
God Was Invented To Explain Mystery. God Is Always Invented To Explain Those Things That You Do Not Understand.
Religious
Religion
Atheism
The Theoretical Broadening Which Comes From Having Many Humanities Subjects On The Campus Is Offset By The General Dopiness Of The People Who Study These Things.
Humorous
Science
People
When Things Are Going Well, Something Will Go Wrong. / When Things Just Can't Get Any Worse, They Will. / Anytime Things Appear To Be Going Better, You Have Overlooked Something.
Difficulty
Wells
Overlooked
When You're Thinking About Something That You Don't Understand, You Have A Terrible, Uncomfortable Feeling Called Confusion... Now, Is The Confusion's Because We're All Some Kind Of Apes That Are Kind Of Stupid Working Against This, Trying To Figure Out [how] To Put The Two Sticks Together To Reach The Banana And We Can't Quite Make It... So I Always Feel Stupid. Once In A While, Though, The Sticks Go Together On Me And I Reach The Banana.
Stupid
Thinking
Two
So My Antagonist Said, "is It Impossible That There Are Flying Saucers? Can You Prove That It's Impossible?" "no," I Said, "i Can't Prove It's Impossible. It's Just Very Unlikely." At That He Said, "you Are Very Unscientific. If You Can't Prove It Impossible Then How Can You Say That It's Unlikely?" But That Is The Way That Is Scientific. It Is Scientific Only To Say What Is More Likely And What Less Likely, And Not To Be Proving All The Time The Possible And Impossible.
Possible And Impossible
Flying
Way
In Any Organization There Ought To Be The Possibility Of Discussion... Fence Sitting Is An Art, And It's Difficult, And It's Important To Do, Rather Than To Go Headlong In One Direction Or The Other. It's Just Better To Have Action, Isn't It Than To Sit On The Fence? Not If You're Not Sure Which Way To Go, It Isn't.
Art
Thinking
One Direction
Our Freedom To Doubt Was Born Out Of A Struggle Against Authority In The Early Days Of Science. It Was A Very Deep And Strong Struggle: Permit Us To Question - To Doubt - To Not Be Sure. I Think That It Is Important That We Do Not Forget This Struggle And Thus Perhaps Lose What We Have Gained.
Strong
Struggle
Science
It Is Surprising That People Do Not Believe That There Is Imagination In Science. It Is A Very Interesting Kind Of Imagination, Unlike That Of The Artist. The Great Difficulty Is In Trying To Imagine Something That You Have Never Seen, That Is Consistent In Every Detail With What Has Already Been Seen, And That Is Different From What Has Been Thought Of; Furthermore, It Must Be Definite And Not A Vague Proposition. That Is Indeed Difficult.
Believe
Artist
People
The Quantum Universe Has A Quotation From Me In Every Chapter - But It's A Damn Good Book Anyway.
Book
Quantum
Chapters
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
I Believe That A Scientist Looking At Nonscientific Problems Is Just As Dumb As The Next Guy.
Stupid
Believe
Guy
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
Another Thing I Must Point Out Is That You Cannot Prove A Vague Theory Wrong.
Theory
Prove
Vague
Science Is What We Have Learned About How To Keep From Fooling Ourselves.
Fooling Ourselves
Nature Isn't Classical, Dammit, And If You Want To Make A Simulation Of Nature, You'd Better Make It Quantum Mechanical, And By Golly It's A Wonderful Problem, Because It Doesn't Look So Easy.
Looks
Want
Problem
I Would Rather Have Questions That Can't Be Answered Than Answers That Can't Be Questioned.
Answers
As Usual, Nature's Imagination Far Surpasses Our Own, As We Have Seen From The Other Theories Which Are Subtle And Deep.
Nature
Imagination
Usual
It Is Going To Be Necessary That Everything That Happens In A Finite Volume Of Space And Time Would Have To Be Analyzable With A Finite Number Of Logical Operations. The Present Theory Of Physics Is Not That Way, Apparently. It Allows Space To Go Down Into Infinitesimal Distances, Wavelengths To Get Infinitely Great, Terms To Be Summed In Infinite Order, And So Forth; And Therefore, If This Proposition [that Physics Is Computer-simulatable] Is Right, Physical Law Is Wrong.
Distance
Science
Finite Number
The Unanswerable Mysteries... The Attitude That All Is Uncertain... To Summarize It - The Humility Of The Intellect.
Attitude
Humility
Pride
Philosophers Say A Great Deal About What Is Absolutely Necessary For Science, And It Is Always, So Far As One Can See, Rather Naive, And Probably Wrong.
Philosopher
Deals
Naive
What I Can't Create I Don't Understand
Computer Programming
Programming Languages
Computer Language
I Do Believe That There Is A Conflict Between Science And Religion ... The Spirit Or Attitude Toward The Facts Is Different In Religion From What It Is In Science. The Uncertainty That Is Necessary In Order To Appreciate Nature Is Not Easily Correlated With The Feeling Of Certainty In Faith.
Attitude
Believe
Order
I'd Hate To Die Twice. It's So Boring.
Hate
Bad Ass
Boring
Nature's Imagination Far Surpasses Our Own.
Imagination
You Can’t Say A Is Made Of B Or Vice Versa. All Mass Is Interaction.
Vices
Made
Vice Versa
Tell Your Son To Stop Trying To Fill Your Head With Science - For To Fill Your Heart With Love Is Enough!
Life
Heart
Son
The Real Problem In Speech Is Not Precise Language. The Problem Is Clear Language.
Learning
Language
Problem
The Game I Play Is A Very Interesting One. It's Imagination, In A Tight Straightjacket.
Play
Games
Interesting
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.
Science
Play
Theoretical Physics
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
This Attitude Of Mind - This Attitude Of Uncertainty - Is Vital To The Scientist, And It Is This Attitude Of Mind Which The Student Must First Acquire. It Becomes A Habit Of Thought. Once Acquired, We Cannot Retreat From It Anymore.
Attitude
Mind
Religion
What I Cannot Create, I Do Not Understand.
Inspiring
Education
Learning
A Person Talks In Such Generalities That Everyone Can Understand Him And It's Considered To Be Some Deep Philosophy. However, I Would Like To Be Very Rather More Special And I Would Like To Be Understood In An Honest Way, Rather Than In A Vague Way.
Philosophy
Special
Way
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
There Is A Computer Disease That Anybody Who Works With Computers Knows About. It's A Very Serious Disease And It Interferes Completely With The Work. The Trouble With Computers Is That You 'play' With Them!
Play
Disease
Serious
That Is The Logical Tight-rope On Which We Have To Walk If We Wish To Interpret Nature.
Science
Wish
Rope
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
It Turns Out That All Life Is Interconnected With All Other Life.
Nature
Life Is
Turns
In Those Days, In Far Rockaway, There Was A Youth Center For Jewish Kids At The Temple.... Somebody Nominated Me For President Of The Youth Center. The Elders Began Getting Nervous, Because I Was An Avowed Atheist By That Time.... I Thought Nature Itself Was So Interesting That I Didn't Want It Distorted Like That. And So I Gradually Came To Disbelieve The Whole Religion.
Atheist
Kids
Interesting
The Other Thing That Gives A Scientific Man The Creeps In The World Today Are The Methods Of Choosing Leaders - In Every Nation. Today, For Example, In The United States, The Two Political Parties Have Decided To Employ Public Relations Men, That Is, Advertising Men, Who Are Trained In The Necessary Methods Of Telling The Truth Or Lying In Order To Develop A Product.
Lying
Party
Men
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.
Ignorance
Men
Thinking
The Exception Tests The Rule.
Exception To The Rule
Tests
Exception
I Don't Feel Frightened By Not Knowing Things, By Being Lost In The Mysterious Universe Without Any Purpose - Which Is The Way It Really Is, As Far As I Can Tell. Possibly. It Doesn't Frighten Me.
Death
Knowledge
Science
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
The Truth Always Turns Out To Be Simpler Than You Thought.
Truth
Science
Simplicity
The "paradox" Is Only A Conflict Between Reality And Your Feeling Of What Reality "ought To Be."
Reality
Feelings
Conflict
Trending Author
Melissa Joan Hart
Sol LeWitt
Yehuda Amichai
Vinod Khosla
James Buchan
Mark Z. Danielewski
Category
Information