Top 1136 Richard Feynman Quotes & Sayings

Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.

When I entered graduate school I had carried out the instructions given to me by my father and had knocked on both Murray Gell-Mann's and Feynman's doors and asked them what they were currently doing. Murray wrote down the partition function for the three-dimensional Ising model and said it would be nice if I could solve it (at least that is how I remember the conversation). Feynman's answer was 'nothing'.

The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia-George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al. ... are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden.

As it stands right now, I lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks, two to one. However, Richard still leads me, one to nothing, in burning yourself up.

Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time.

Nobody's ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there's some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

[On Richard P. Feynman's live demonstration of the rigidity of the O-rings when cold that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, killing seven astronauts:] The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question.

Richard started to walk away. Zedd called his name. He stopped and turned. Just be glad she cares for you as much as she does. If she didn't, she might have touched you." Richard stared back at him a long moment. "I'm afraid, in a way, she already has.

There are great science books that were conceived as books. Feynman's famous introductory lectures in physics, which have a beginning and an end, which are written with style.

Richard Pryor was my hero. Richard Pryor was keeping it 100.

Feynman's cryptic remark, "no one is that much smarter ...," to me, implies something Feynman kept emphasizing: that the key to his achievements was not anything "magical" but the right attitude, the focus on nature's reality, the focus on asking the right questions, the willingness to try (and to discard) unconventional answers, the sensitive ear for phoniness, self-deception, bombast, and conventional but unproven assumptions.

I thought I'd write a massive postmodern novel about Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood, but it turns out they couldn't have met because the first mention of Robin Hood appears 60 years after Richard died.

The social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies.

You step forward and make it real for a start. You choose a sensible moment in history. Funnily enough, England was bankrupt and the moment is the death of Richard The Lionheart... Richard takes an arrow in the neck collecting a small debt from a small castle on his way home from the Crusades because he's penniless.

I hung around with Jason Robards, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton. I knew not to match them for drinks.

Friends frequently ask how I, given my politics, dealt with seeing my brother and his companion, Richard, together for the first time. They are surprised when I tell them it wasn't as unsettling as I had anticipated. Richard was smart, funny, kind, and clearly devoted to Curtis. They just clicked.

I was on the school bus telling Richard Pryor jokes. I was sneaking, listening to Richard Pryor albums and would go to school the next day, tell all the jokes, and get in trouble because I was cursing.

I found two true stories. One was in 2003. One was the beginning of 2004. I decided to meld them. Richard Davis' story which is the largest portion of this, a lot of the events are exactly as you saw, exactly what happened and the locations. Exactly as it was said with the chicken house and the strip club. Richard's parents were on the set and they'll tell you that the story is different than their son's. I was very concerned because I called them to say, 'You understand I'm fictionalizing this story?

The irony is that we're really good at comedy in Britain, but for some reason, we make very few comedy films. And when we do, they're either quite American in style, or very Richard Curtis. And I like Richard Curtis, but I think only Richard Curtis should write Richard Curtis films, and other people should try and find their own style.

Is he a scumbag in training?” Richard glanced at the gunman. “At least have the decency to hold the gun properly, you fool. If you don’t know how, pass it to someone who does. I’m not going to suffer being shot at by anything less than a full- fledged lowlife. (Richard)

Sir Richard sighed. "Rid yourself of the notion that I cherish any villainous designs upon your person," he said. "I imagine I might well be your father. How old are you?" "I am turned seventeen." "Well, I am nearly thirty," said Sir Richard. Miss Creed worked this out. "You couldn't possibly be my father!" "I am far too drunk to solve arithmetical problems. Let it suffice that I have not the slightest intention of making love to you.

My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there!

Once we were driving in the midwest and we pulled into a McDonald's. Someone came up to me and asked me why I have Feynman diagrams all over my van. I replied, "Because I am Feynman!" The young man went, "Ahhhhh!"

"Half genius and half buffoon," Freeman Dyson ... wrote. ... [Richard] Feynman struck him as uproariously American-unbuttoned and burning with physical energy. It took him a while to realize how obsessively his new friend was tunneling into the very bedrock of modern science.

[Richard Feynman] truly believed that if you couldn't explain something simply, you didn't understand it.

Francis Underwood was entirely based on Richard III. When Michael Dobbs wrote 'House of Cards' in the original British series, Richard III is what he based the character on.

Richard is a very sexy man. He's got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense." (on Richard Burton)

The future is a process, not a destination. Richard Stallman is a guy my age. I sympathize with Richard rather more than I sympathize with Richard's open-source ideas, but the guy's a mortal human being and so is his social movement. Open-source is a means of production.

Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

The thin girl was gulping down one of Richard's bananas in what was, Richard reflected, the least erotic display of banana-eating he had ever seen.

I think I hoped for something more. Maybe I even hoped that I could find in Richard what I had with Ben. But it is suddenly very clear: Richard is not fallin in love with me and I'm not falling in love with Richard. We are not creating anything permanent or special. We are only having fun together. It is a fling- a fling just like he said last night- a fling with an ending yet to be determined. I feel relieved to have it defined

In the past few months I've become religious, I've started to believe in god, creationism and intelligent design, and the reason that I now believe in god and creationism and intelligent design is because of Professor Richard Dawkins. Because when I look at something as complex and intricate and beautiful as Professor Richard Dawkins, I don't think that just could've evolved by chance! Professor Richard Dawkins was put there by god to test us, like fossils. And facts.

You look at Richard Pryor and Robert Klein and George Carlin and Richard Lewis - those guys were so smart, they were the thinking-man stand-ups.

Richard opened his hand, and the key stared up at him from his palm. "By my crooked teeth," asked Richard, remembering, "who am I?

I went to a Jesuit school and they did a William Shakespeare play every year. I got to know Shakespeare as parts I wanted to play. I missed out on playing Ophelia - it was an all-boys school. The younger boys used to play the girls, I played Lady Anne in Richard III and Lady Macbeth, then Richard II and Malvolio. I just became a complete Shakespeare nut, really.

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

Ordinarily it would take me about fifteen minutes to get a hallucination going," wrote Feynman, "but on a few occasions, when I smoked some marijuana beforehand, it came very quickly.

I wonder how Feynman would feel if he had to be talking to not just a few nuts of this kind but e.g. to 2,500 similar nuts who would be moreover described by the media as good scientists, if not the best ones in the world. ;-) Good for him that he managed to die in time.

I think that’s a mistake if [Aaron Rodgers] does not throw at [Richard Sherman]. Now, he doesn’t have to make it personal vendetta against him because I’m sure all year, all he’s heard is how he did not throw on Richard Sherman.

A couple of clues came my way of what I might be getting myself into when I sat down with a number of actors who had played Richard III in the past. And I was hoping of course, that one of them or all of them were gonna give me the magic key, the secret way in to play Richard III but none of them did that.But every one of them did say the following, "Be careful."

Richard, might I ask you something? We've talked tonight of what you must do, of what you can do, of what you ought to do.But we've said nothing of what you want to do.Richard, do you want to be King?" At first, she thought he wasn't going to answer her. But as she studied his face, she saw he was turning her question over in his mind, seeking to answer it as honestly as he could. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes...I do.

There are many styles of standup, but the comedians I like are people like Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor. Because Richard Pryor told the truth. Chris Rock. I love Chris Rock. He's funny, but he's also poignant. He's not there just to make people laugh; he's there to make people wake up, too.

The late Richard Feynman, a superb physicist, said once as we talked about the laser that the way to tell a great idea is that, when people hear it, they say, 'Gee, I could have thought of that.'

Strange as it may seem, wrote Richard Feynman, we understand the distribution of matter in the interior of the Sun far better than we understand the interior of the Earth.

For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.

There's only going be one Richard Pryor. You know how many came out after Richard Pryor and died trying to be compared to him? Or Bernie Mac? You got to be like you.

Becoming Richard Pryor is a compulsively readable book that sets a new gold standard for American biography. Scott Scaul's research is extraordinary; his writing is taut, elegant, and insightful; and he captures both the hilarity and pain that made Richard Pryor such a towering figure.

I'm from the Bob Wills and the Little Richard school of music. Bob Wills did what the hell he thought, Little Richard did what he thought, and those were my big influences.

I won't say there's a good Richard and a bad Richard, but I've got a switch, and when it clicks on, I'm somebody else.

If you're a classical actor, every Shakespearean part you play, you then say, 'McKellen did it this way,' and, 'Jacobi did it this way.' There's a whole list of Oliviers and people, whether you play Hamlet or Richard II or Richard III, any of those roles. And I found that a bit when I did 'La Cage.' It didn't bother me one bit.

Yes it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait—' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate— 'let it be. It won't be long.' Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?' The Professor looked blankly at him.

I must confess that the original 'Pretty Woman' was terrific and a hit, but I always felt that creatively I didn't do justice to Richard Gere's character. So in the musical, we have some great new moments for Richard's character.

Feynman once said, 'Science is imagination in a straitjacket.' It is ironic that in the case of quantum mechanics, the people without the straitjackets are generally the nuts.

Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic. Those who watched Feynman in moments of intense concentration came away with a strong, even disturbing sense of the physicality of the process, as though his brain did not stop with the grey matter but extended through every muscle in his body.

Brighter Than a Thousand Suns' by Robert Jungk and 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!' by Richard Feynman were both books my father purchased for me when I was in high school. Both left a lasting impression on me, because they chronicle the lives of some of the most creative scientists of the 21st century.

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.

The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.'

Richard Nixon was a very intelligent and able man. And he had the right ideas. But he did not have the adherence to principles that [Ronald] Reagan had. He did some very good things. We owe to Richard Nixon the volunteer army - he got rid of the draft. And that was a major increase in freedom.