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" Before I was born, my father told my mother, 'If it's a boy, he's going to be a scientist.' "

Richard P. Feynman

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" In the Raphael Room, the secret turned out to be that only some of the paintings were made by the great master; the rest were made by students. I had liked the ones by Raphael. This was a big jab for my self-confidence in my ability to appreciate art. "

Richard P. Feynman

" I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it. "

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" Investigating the forces that hold the nuclear particles together was a long task. "

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" I don't believe in honors - it bothers me. Honors bother: honors is epaulettes; honors is uniforms. My papa brought me up this way. "

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" Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. "

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" Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical. "

Richard P. Feynman

" It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but, with a little mathematical fiddling, you can show the relationship. "

Richard P. Feynman

" I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things. "

Richard P. Feynman

" Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that. "

Richard P. Feynman

" The universe is very large, and its boundaries are not known very well, but it is still possible to define some kind of a radius to be associated with it. "

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" 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

" Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of substances, it was a tremendous success. But still there was the problem of the interaction of light and matter. "

Richard P. Feynman

" Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone - both to the novice and to the experienced physicist. "

Richard P. Feynman

" I want to marry Arline because I love her - which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love. "

Richard P. Feynman

" Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things. "

Richard P. Feynman

" With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics. "

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

" For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. "

Richard P. Feynman

" Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were. "

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

" 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. "

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" Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea. "

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" See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. "

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

" First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject and what you want them to know, and the method will result more or less by common sense. "

Richard P. Feynman

" Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this. "

Richard P. Feynman

" I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there. "

Richard P. Feynman