Richard Feynman1918–1988Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
- The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 2, “The Relation of Mathematics to Physics,” p. 58
All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it.
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 6, “Probability and Uncertainty — the Quantum Mechanical View of Nature,” p. 129- address “What is Science?”, presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320
The “paradox” is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality “ought to be.”
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964), volume III; lecture 18, “Angular Momentum”; section 18-3, “The annihilation of positronium”; p. 18-9- Note to the mother of Marcus Chown, who had admired the profile of Feynman presented in the BBC TV Horizon program “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” (1981)
- QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 10
- “Simulating Physics with Computers”, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, volume 21, 1982, p. 467-488, at p. 471
- Lecture 1. “Photons: Corpuscles of Light” (1979) Sir Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures, University of Auckland.
- Rogers Commission Report (1986)
- What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), “The Making of a Scientist,” p. 11: video
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. I (1963), lecture 3, “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences”, p. 3-6
Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel prize.
statement (c. 1965), quoted in “An irreverent best-seller by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman gives nerds a good name”, People Magazine (22 July 1985)- The Value of Science (1955)
