Richard P. Feynman Quotes

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

We appear to be programmed with the idea that there are 'things' outside of our self, and some are conscious, and some are not.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Traditional science assumes, for the most part, that an objective observer independent reality exists; the universe, stars, galaxies, sun, moon and earth would still be there if no one was looking.

Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?

Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.

Nothing has existence unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived further influences that reality. Even time itself is not exempted from biocentrism.

Reality: What a concept!

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

We are today beginning to see work by very reputable scientists that says the universe is created by our observations. It is not a coincidence; we are actively involved in physically shaping the world that we experience.

I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch?

We never see a tree except through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Look at a tree and you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it completely, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it.

Photography hankers after the condition of the neutral observer. But there can be no such things as a neutral observer. For something to be seen, it must be looked at by somebody, and any true and real depiction must be an account of the experience of that looking.

Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

We are taught what reality is in all kinds of ways.

A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.

You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

I have a feeling Virtual Reality will further expose the conceit that 'reality' is a fact. It will provide another reminder of the seamless continuity between the world outside and the world within, delivering another major hit to the old fraud of objectivity. 'Real,' as Kevin Kelly put it, 'is going to be one of the most relative words we'll have.'

What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.