The first time I ever said anything to Arlene was at a dance. She was very popular, and everybody was cutting in and dancing with her. I remember thinking I’d like to dance with her, too, and trying to decide when to cut in. I always had trouble with that problem: first of all, when she’s over on the other side of the dance floor dancing with some guy, it’s too complicated — so you wait until they come closer. Then when she’s near you, you think, “Well, no, this isn’t the kind of music I’m good at dancing to.” So you wait for another type of music. When the music changes to something you like, you sort of step forward — at least you think you step forward to cut in — when some other guy cuts in just in front of you. So now you have to wait a few minutes because it’s impolite to cut in too soon after someone else has. And by the time a few minutes have passed, they’re over at the other side of the dance floor again, or the music has changed again, or whatever!
“We physicists are always checking to see if there is something the matter with the theory. That’s the game, because if there is something the matter, it’s interesting! But so far, we have found nothing wrong with the theory of quantum electrodynamics. It is, therefore, I would say, the jewel of physics our proudest possession.”
- Richard Feynman, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.
A poet once said, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
-Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics Volume I
“The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty damn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”
Richard Feynman, The Value of Science (1955)
Richard Feynman, Physics Nobel Laureate (1965)
[My Father] felt that women were the great danger to a man, that a man always has to watch out and be tough about women. And when he sees me marrying a girl with tuberculosis, he thinks of the possibility that I’m going to get sick, too.My whole family was worried about that — aunts, uncles, everyone. They brought the family doctor over to our house. He tried to explain to me that tuberculosis is a dangerous disease, and that I’m bound to get it.I said, “Just tell me how it’s transmitted, and we’ll figure it out.” We were already very, very careful: we knew we must not kiss, because there’s a lot of bacteria in the mouth.Then they very carefully explained to me that when I had promised to marry Arlene, I didn’t know the situation. Everybody would understand that I didn’t know the situation then, and that it didn’t represent a real promise.I never had that feeling, that crazy idea that they had, that I was getting married because I had promised it. I hadn’t even thought of that. It wasn’t a question of having promised anything; we had stalled around, not getting a piece of paper and not being formally married, but we were in love, and were already married, emotionally.I said, “Would it be sensible for a husband who learns that his wife has tuberculosis to leave her?”
-What Do You Care What Other People Think? , Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman on Social Science
“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”
-Richard Feynman
