Richard Feynman: Frases en inglés (página 3)

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Contexto: Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Fuente: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 10

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Contexto: Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

letter to Koichi Mano (3 February 1966); published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman (2005), p. 198, 201
also quoted by Freeman Dyson in "Wise Man" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18350, The New York Review of Books (20 October 2005)
Contexto: The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

The Value of Science (1955)
Contexto: Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it.I learned a way of expressing this common human problem on a trip to Honolulu. In a Buddhist temple there, the man in charge explained a little bit about the Buddhist religion for tourists, and then ended his talk by telling them he had something to say to them that they would never forget — and I have never forgotten it. It was a proverb of the Buddhist religion:To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.What then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that enable us to determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use.But the key obviously has value: how can we enter heaven without it?

The Value of Science (1955)
Contexto: 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 darn 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.

The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Contexto: …Dirac discovered the correct laws for relativity quantum mechanics simply by guessing the equation. The method of guessing the equation seems to be a pretty effective way of guessing new laws. This shows again that mathematics is a deep way of expressing nature, and any attempt to express nature in philosophical principles, or in seat-of-the-pants mechanical feelings, is not an efficient way.

volume II; lecture 1, "Electromagnetism"; section 1-6, "Electromagnetism in science and technology"; p. 1-11
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
Contexto: From a long view of the history of mankind — seen from, say, ten thousand years from now — there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.

" Cargo Cult Science http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm", adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 342
Contexto: We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.

Fuente: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 251-252, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=45m21s
(Also in book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999) p. 23.)
Contexto: People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not. I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it; that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is!… And therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we are trying to do except to find out more about it… My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world.

as quoted by K.C. Cole, Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1985)

statement (1959), quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick, p. 372

Rejoinder when told that he couldn't talk about physics, because "nobody [at this table] knows anything about it."
Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake", p. 310.
Quoted in Handbook of Economic Growth (2005) by Philippe Aghion and Steven N. Durlauf.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "The 7 Percent Solution", p. 255
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

" Cargo Cult Science http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm", adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 343
Variante: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

Fuente: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 28

Fuente: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 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). Written after Chown asked Feynman to write her a birthday note, hoping it would increase her interest in science.
Photo of note published in No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1996), by Christopher Sykes, p. 161.
In a " Quantum theory via 40-tonne trucks http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/quantum-theory-via-40tonne-trucks-how-science-writing-became-popular-1866934.html", The Independent (17 January 2010), and in a audio interview on BBC 4 (September 2010), Chown recalled the note as: "Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics is not the most important thing, love is."

Does not appear to be from any of his books or cited in a biography. A Google Books search shows that the oldest book citing "physics is like sex" is Scary Monsters and Bright Ideas (2000) by science broadcaster Robyn Williams. On p. 44, this book claims: "Einstein said, 'You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother'. Richard Feynman added, 'Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it'." Given that Einstein didn't really say the former, it's likely that Feynman didn't really say the latter.
Disputed and/or attributed
Variante: Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.