“I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”
Richard Feynman
Horizon: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Primary source)
A candid 1981 BBC interview where Richard Feynman reflects on curiosity, discovery, honors, scientific thinking, and the deep personal joy he finds in understanding how the world works.
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“You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don’t have to know an answer, I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”
Richard Feynman
“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.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.”
— Richard Feynman Primary sourceMore quotes by Richard Feynman →
“How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all the other time. I’d like to be an old man and to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Without imagination not much can be done.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source