Richard P. Feynman Quotes

Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

The common aim of all science is the gradual removal of prejudice.

I feign no hypotheses.

It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

Science as we now understand the word is of later birth. If its germinal origin may be traced to the early period when Observation, Induction, and Deduction were first employed, its birth must be referred to that comparatively recent period when the mind, rejecting the primitive tendency to seek in supernatural agencies for an explanation of all external phenomena, endeavoured, by a systematic investigation of the phenomena themselves to discover their invariable order and connection.

I think the main lesson that I have learned is that a good scientist is a humble scientist who is open-minded to listen to other scientists when they discover something.

Science is the ultimate tool to reveal the laws of nature, and the one word written on its banner is Truth.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

The term Science should not be given to anything but the aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions.

Modern science rests on a universality that transcends ethnic, racial, and religious frameworks.

If you're a real scientist, you're constantly open to new data. Nothing is ever 100% validated.

Something my father dearly loved is the scientific method, and it's founded in this element of humility. The idea is that you pursue the truth wherever it goes; you need to evidence, and you can - you see if it's repeatable.

I always looked at myself as a physicist learning new tricks by looking at nature.

What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. ... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.

Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

Because of their very nature, science and logical thinking can never decide what is possible or impossible. Their only function is to explain what has been ascertained by experience and observation.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application.