Quarks came in a number of varieties – in fact, at first, only three were needed to explain all the hundreds of particles and the different kinds of quarks – they are called u-type, d-type, s-type. – Richard P. Feynman
Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‘If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.’ – Richard P. Feynman
When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‘Calculus for the Practical Man.’ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it. – Richard P. Feynman
I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere – like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department – I would draw the other people. – Richard P. Feynman
When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but there wasn’t any wind, I would try to fit the miracle into the real world and explain it in terms of natural phenomena. – Richard P. Feynman
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
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there. – Richard P. Feynman
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. – Richard P. Feynman
There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature. – Richard P. Feynman
I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it. – Richard P. Feynman
If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‘Oh, I forgot that bit,’ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is! – Richard P. Feynman
The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates. – Richard P. Feynman
We’re always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don’t understand the conclusions. After we’ve checked them enough, we’re okay. – Richard P. Feynman
I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew. – Richard P. Feynman
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! – Richard P. Feynman
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard P. Feynman
It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from? – Richard P. Feynman
I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. 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. – Richard P. Feynman
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. – Richard P. Feynman
The most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth. – Richard P. Feynman
See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. – Richard P. Feynman
I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it. – Richard P. Feynman
If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before. – Richard P. Feynman
The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life. – Richard P. Feynman
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. – Richard P. Feynman
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. – Richard P. Feynman
I don’t believe in honors – it bothers me. Honors bother: honors is epaulettes; honors is uniforms. My papa brought me up this way. – Richard P. Feynman
Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen. – Richard P. Feynman
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. – Richard P. Feynman
