Richard Feynman

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, 'Look how beautiful it is,' and I'll agree. Then he says, 'You see, as a scientist, you take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,' and I think that he's missing something. I understand the beauty of the flower in a much more profound way.

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

I have no respect for age. I have no respect for names. I have no respect for titles. I have respect for understanding.

To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.

I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.

There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.

The world is a dynamic mess of jiggling things.

I was an average student, but I had a good teacher.

The thing that doesn't fit is the thing that is most interesting.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

There are no miracles, only wonders.

I found myself in a situation where I was giving an answer to a question that I didn't understand, and that alarmed me.

The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.