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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 brought in - a trial and error system.

Richard P. Feynman

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Richard P. Feynman
Age: 69 †
Born: 1918
Born: May 11
Died: 1988
Died: February 15
Inventor
Percussionist
Physicist
Politician
Quantum Physicist
Science Communicator
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Writer
Far Rockaway
New York
Richard Phillips Feynman
Richard P. Feynman
Ofey
Running
Developed
Government
Errors
Ideas
Brought
Really
Tried
Tossed
Necessary
Arrange
System
Trial
Knew
Error
Idea
Trials

More quotes by Richard P. Feynman

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The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory , you must try to explain what's good and what's bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty .
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We can deduce, often, from one part of physics like the law of gravitation, a principle which turns out to be much more valid than the derivation.
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When things are going well, something will go wrong. / When things just can't get any worse, they will. / Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
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What we need is imagination, but imagination in a terrible strait-jacket.
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Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.
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It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management.
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The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!
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Victory usually goes to those green enough to underestimate the monumental hurdles they are facing.
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The fact that you are not sure means that it is possible that there is another way someday.
Richard P. Feynman
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In its efforts to learn as much as possible about nature, modern physics has found that certain things can never be known with certainty. Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.
Richard P. Feynman
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
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It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about we can discuss.
Richard P. Feynman
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I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Richard P. Feynman
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An ordinary fool isn't a faker an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
Richard P. Feynman
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I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
Richard P. Feynman
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All things are made of atoms - little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
Richard P. Feynman
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Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
Richard P. Feynman
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Turbulence is the most important unsolved problem of classical physics.
Richard P. Feynman
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I do believe that there is a conflict between science and religion ... the spirit or attitude toward the facts is different in religion from what it is in science. The uncertainty that is necessary in order to appreciate nature is not easily correlated with the feeling of certainty in faith.
Richard P. Feynman
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If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt. Don't ask why, or what difficulties you may get into.
Richard P. Feynman