Richard Feynman quotes:

..."it is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of
nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some
understanding of mathematics.  I am sorry, but this seems to be the case."

"I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence."

"First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it." (The quote is from a PBS show on Dr. Feynman. He was describing to his class how to look for a new law of physics)

"You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish."

"I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians."

"The next question was - what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward."

"The fact that I beat a drum has nothing to do with the fact that I do theoretical physics. Theoretical physics is a human endeavor, one of human beings – and this perpetual desire to prove that peopl e who do it are human by showing that they do other things that a few other humans do (like playing bongo drums) is insulting to me."

"... I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never."

"But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me."

"We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes the world is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics ..."

"I often use the analogy of a chess game: one can learn all the rules of chess, but one doesn’t know how to play well. The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don’t know one or two rules. But in this part of the board where things are operation, those one or two rules are not operating much and we can get along pretty well without understanding those rules. That’s the way it is, I would say, regarding the phenomena of life, consciousness and so forth."

"God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you’re taking away from God; you don’t need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven’t figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don’t believe the laws will explain, such as consiousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time – life and death – stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don’t think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out."

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."

"Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get "down the drain" into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that".

  "I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring."

"Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me
anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had
never heard anything about physics!"

        -- Wolfgang Pauli

--Winifred Holtby, 1925.

Einstein Sampling:

"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." or sometimes quoted as "God does not play dice with the universe."

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love"

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."

"Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existen ce by the process of conceptualisation. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary."

"I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research."

"Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it."

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium (1941) ch. 13

"The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder."

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. "

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science"

"When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Neverthess, noone doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature."

"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being."
[Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray. Source: "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann]

"I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."

"I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. Bu t my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up."

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."

"I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive."

"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer ."

"If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber."

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

"I want to know God's thoughts,..... the rest are details.."

"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary."

"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."

This is a story I heard as a freshman at the University of Utah when Dr. Henry Eyring was still teaching chemistry there. Many years before he and Dr. Einstein were colleagues. As they walked together they noted an unusual plant growing along a garden walk. Dr. Eyring asked Dr. Einstein if he knew what the plant was. Einstein did not, and together they consulted a gardener. The gardener indicated the plant was green beans and forever afterwards Eyring said Einstein didn't know beans . I heard this second hand and I don't know if the story has ever been published...
-S K Franz-

"The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy."

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

"The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle."

"Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ."

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others."

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile ."

"Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty ."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge ."

"The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?"

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."

"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."

"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."

"Strange is our Situation Here Upon Earth"

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."

"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."

"An empty stomach is not a good political advisor."

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."

"If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age."

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

"The faster you go, the shorter you are."

"Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."

"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world."

"The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat. "

"The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."

"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves." (1929)

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

"Perfections of mean and confusion of goals seem -in my opinion- to characterize our age. "

"Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions."

"All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal."

"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person."