Richard Feynman

“ספק ודיון הם חיוניים להתקדמות אל הלא־נודע.”

“אני מעדיף שאלות שלא ניתן לענות עליהן על תשובות שאינן ניתנות לערעור.”

“כל הדברים מורכבים מאטומים – חלקיקים זעירים שנעים סביב בתנועה מתמדת, מושכים אחד השני כשהם מופרדים, אבל נמנעים מלהתחבר זה לזה. במשפט האחד הזה, אתם תראו, יש כמות עצומה של מידע על העולם, אם מיישמים מעט מחשבה ודמיון.”

“פיזיקה זה כמו סקס. בוודאי, זה יכול להניב כמה תוצאות מעשיות, אבל זאת לא הסיבה שאנו עושים את זה.”

“זה לא משנה כמה התיאוריה שלך יפה, זה לא משנה כמה אתה חכם. אם היא לא מתיישבת עם הניסוי, היא שגויה.”

“פילוסופים של המדע מועילים למדע כפי שאורניתולוגים מועילים לציפורים.”

“נולדתי בלי לדעת דבר והיה לי רק מעט זמן לשנות זאת, פה ושם.”

“דת היא תרבות של אמונה. מדע הוא תרבות של ספק.”

“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”

“I think nature's imagination Is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax”

“Take this neat little equation here. It tells me all the ways an electron can make itself comfortable in or around an atom. That's the logic of it. The poetry of it is that the equation tells me how shiny gold is, how come rocks are hard, what makes grass green, and why you can't see the wind. And a million other things besides, about the way nature works.”

“First of all there is matter—and, remarkably enough, all matter is the same. The matter of which the stars are made is known to be the same as the matter on the earth...The same kinds of atoms appear to be in living creatures as in non-living creatures.”

“I believe, therefore, that although it is not the case today, that there may some day come a time, I should hope, when it will fully appreciated that the power of governments should be limited; that governments ought not to be empowered to decide the validity of scientific theories, that this is a ridiculous thing for them to try to do; that they are not to decide the description of history or of economic theory or of philosophy.”

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”

“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.”

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

“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”

“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.”

“If one cannot see gravitation acting here, he has no soul.”