“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
“The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“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“I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
— Richard Feynman Primary sourceMore quotes by Richard Feynman →
“I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“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“Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“If I think something’s a waste of time or inappropriate I don’t wait to point it out. I say it right away. It’s real time. So you might hear me say That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard many times during a meeting”
— Bill Gates Primary source