Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.
Richard P. Feynman
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 uncertainty about different things, but I am 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. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened 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.
mystery purpose philosophy uncertainty live meaning knowing universe wrong interesting lost feel answers beliefs things mysterious answer atheism
It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.
philosophy time science religion human universe evil good drama animals space struggle stage big complicated god atheism thing view
But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.
life death found biology inevitability
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
funny humor science inspirational
philosophy priorities physics
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
philosophy scientists
[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.
science
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
science sex
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
foolishness science knowledge rationalism self-delusion
We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imagining of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck-half of us upside down-by a mysterious attraction, to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years, than to be carried on the back of an elephant supported on a tortoise swimming in a bottomless sea.
[Doubt] is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas bought in - a trial-and-error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.. Doubt is not to be feared, but welcomed and discussed.
doubt science reason democracy discussion
If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question.. You may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world.
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
science learning
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school.. It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it.. That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.
science physics
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
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