Richard P. Feynman Quotes About Certainty

Quotes about: Certainty

• We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Thinking, Incomplete Knowledge, People

• Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Degrees, Body, Absolute Certainty

  Richard P. Feynman (2011). “"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character”, p.263, W. W. Norton & Company

• We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

  Richard P. Feynman

  People, Doubt, Progress

  "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1999.

• You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things... It doesn't frighten me.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Ignorance, Knowing, Doubt

• We find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known with different degrees of certainty: "It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true".

  Richard P. Feynman

  Humility, Curiosity, Degrees

• If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Opportunity, Progress

• 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

  Effort, Physics, Modern

  The Feynman Lectures on Physics (pp. 6-1 1)

• 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

  Attitude, Believe, Order

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