Feynman's quotes

Richard Phillips Feynman's quotes

Photo credit: nobelprize.org

 

Richard Phillips Feynman (1918-1988) was a notable theoretical physicist who won Nobel prize on 1965 with team of other two scientists for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with in depth consequences for the physics of elementary particles. 

 

On teaching

• If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it. 

• Engineers are expected to be able to explain a complex technology or product in simple, easily-understood terms not because the executive needs it explained simply to understand it, but as proof that the engineer understands it completely.

• I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. 

• What I cannot create, I do not understand.  

 

Photo credit: feynman.com 

Theory vs Experiment

• It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

 

Psychology

• All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t, which is just another way of saying that you can’t.

 

Purpose of life

•  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.

 

One sentence for 'next generation of creatures' if all scientific knowledge gets destroyed 

• If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? 

  I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that 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.