Richard P. Feynman Quotes

I was always very strong in math, physics and calculus.

What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?

It's much more important to be interested than to be interesting.

Searching is everything - going beyond what you know. And the test of the search is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you.

Knowing is NOT the most important thing. To be able to FIND OUT is more important than knowing.

They (children) are my teachers. I watch them and I learn. It is important for us to try and be like them and imitate them. They are golden.

Keeping an open mind is always important.

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising.

I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

The most important thing about education is appetite.

In my late teens, like many a devout Catholic boy, I considered the priesthood and even went as far as discussing the idea at a seminary in Belfast but hesitated. I decided to focus on physics at university, another way perhaps to contemplate the mysteries of reality.

truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. i don’t dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, i know me too. i want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what’s revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what?

The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened

By far the most important form of attention we can give our loved ones is listening... True listening is love in action.

Physics is the science of all the tremendously powerful invisibilities - of magnetism, electricity, gravity, light, sound, cosmic rays. Physics is the science of the mysteries of the universe. How could anyone think it dull?

While there is such a thing as correctness in ethics, in interpretation, in mathematics, the way to understand that is not by trying to model it on the ways in which we get things right in physics.

The important thing is to never stop questioning. Never lose a holy curiosity.

I suppose the most important thing is to stay interested. It's very easy in life if you get to a place where you're successful to hit the same groove on the record player over and over again because it's safe.

Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the known.

When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.

Turbulence is the most important unsolved problem of classical physics.

In our work, we are always between Scylla and Charybdis; we may fail to abstract enough, and miss important physics, or we may abstract too much and end up with fictitious objects in our models turning into real monsters that devour us.

Mystery is more important than knowledge.

The questions are always more important than the answers.

I suppose my interest in looking for life elsewhere in the universe really dates back to my teens. What teenager doesn't look up at the sky at night and think am I alone in the universe? Well most people get over it, but I never did and though I made a career more in physics and cosmology than astrobiology I've always had a soft spot for the subject of life because it does seem so mysterious.