Richard P. Feynman Quotes

Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

It is always better to be inefficient and correct than to be incorrect and efficient.

Because Mathematicians frequently make use of Time, they ought to have a distinct idea of the meaning of that Word, otherwise they are Quacks.

The truth shall set you free. When you hear the truth, it sets you free. So mathematics is truth. It adds up. There's no error. Only time there's an error is when man miscalculates his own problems or his own equations.

The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil.

In order for answers to become clear, the questions have to be clear.

You can forgive if the shot is not right, or the lighting is a bit off, but not if the writing is bad.

Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men.

The mistake we make with many people is that we assume that we have the model. It is a type of condescension.

Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.

The smallest errors are always the best.

I cite my vouchers to every passage and I have done my utmost, first to find out the truth, and then to relate it in the clearest order. I have laboured after accuracy; and yet I dare not say that I am without mistake; nor do I desire the reader to conceal any he may possibly find.

It is exactness I aim at, and would not have the least mistake, if possible, pass to the world. If I have unhappily fallen into any, it is through inadvertency only

It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

When truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

I have no interest in being wrong, so if I am, please correct me. I don't want to be wrong. There's nothing in it for you or for me to be wrong.

I am trying to be a lot more careful - and to not miss easy balls.

Even a very little girl can wield a slide rule, the cursor serving as a haft.

When I was little, I carried a book of times tables around everywhere and always tried to get the best score. I like the fact that you don't need any tools, only your head. I also enjoy rules and, with maths, you are either right or wrong.

There is nothing in the world more perfect than a slide rule. Its burnished aluminum feels cool against your lips, and if you hold it level to the light you can see God's most perfect right angle in each of its corners.

If you don't get it right, what's the point?

To be sure, mathematics can be extended to any branch of knowledge, including economics, provided the concepts are so clearly defined as to permit accurate symbolic representation. That is only another way of saying that in some branches of discourse it is desirable to know what you are talking about.

What is necessary is to rectify names.