The Meaning of It All Quotes

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing—atoms with curiosity—that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these 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.

Some will tell me that I have just described a religious experience. Very well, you may call it what you will. Then, in that language I would say that the young man's religious experience is of such a kind that he finds the religion of his church inadequate to describe, to encompass that kind of experience. The God of the church isn't big enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Some people say, How can you live without knowing? I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure—the adventure into the unknown, an unknown that must be recognized as unknown in order to be explored, the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered, the attitude that all is uncertain. To summarize it: humility of the intellect.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, "I am going to tell you something that you will never forget." And then he said, "To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“How you get to know is what I want to know.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“What looks still to our crude eyes is a wild and dynamic dance.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“The other great heritage is Christian ethics—the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual, the humility of the spirit. These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Of course, I am interested, but I would not dare to talk about them. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“We are so used to looking at the world from the point of view of living things that we cannot understand what it means not to be alive, and yet most of the time the world had nothing alive on it. And in most places in the universe today there probably is nothing alive.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“At some time people thought that the potential that people had was not developed because everyone was ignorant, and that education was the solution to the problem, that if all people were educated, we could perhaps all be Voltaires. But it turns out that falsehood and evil can be taught as easily as good.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Nobody understands the world they’re in, but some people are better off at it than others.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an ‘oomph,’ this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, ‘Well, that is the funny behavior of the ‘oomph.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Religion gives inspiration to act well. Not only that, it gives inspiration to the arts and to many other activities of human beings.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“I dedicate this lecture to showing what ridiculous conclusions and rare statements such a man as myself can make. I wish, therefore, to destroy any image of authority that has previously been generated.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when the real fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around. And”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic,”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Knowledge is of no real value if all you can tell me is what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow if you do something—not only necessary, but fun. Only you must be willing to stick your neck out.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“If we were not able or did not desire to look in any new direction, if we did not have a doubt or recognize ignorance, we would not get any new ideas.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“This universe has been described by many, but it just goes on, with its edge as unknown as the bottom of the bottomless sea of the other idea—just as mysterious, just as awe-inspiring, and just as incomplete as the poetic pictures that came before.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“And the result of this of course is that the politician must give an answer. And the result of this is that political promises can never be kept. It is a mechanical fact; it is impossible. The result of that is that nobody believes campaign promises. And the result of that is a general disparaging of politics, a general lack of respect for the people who are trying to solve problems, and so forth. It’s all generated from the very beginning (maybe—this is a simple analysis). It’s all generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to find the answer instead of trying”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“It’s all generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to find the answer instead of trying to find a man who has a way of getting at the answer.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Being the word of God connects the ethical and metaphysical aspects of religion. And finally, that also inspires the inspiration, because if you are working for God and obeying God’s will, you are in some way connected to the universe, your actions have a meaning in the greater world, and that is an inspiring aspect.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist