"Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools-guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus-THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!"
- Richard Feynman (via richardfeynman)

"The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion."
- Richard Feynman (via richardfeynman)

"Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all."
- Richard Feynman (via richardfeynman)

richardfeynman:

Richard Feynman

"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
- Richard Feynman (via richardfeynman)

"Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think"
- Albert Einstein (via astrometry)

"I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me."
- Richard Feynman; The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (via cosmonaut-cossack)

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."
-

Richard Feynman 

The difference between “learning” and “learning” is important to understand.

(via sciencesoup)

"I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!"
-

Richard Feynman

“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character

(via lospaziobianco)

themagicofreality:

The principles of physics…

God behaves like a strange king who wanted to test the obedience of his subjects on ridiculous things, and who punished them afterward well beyond their crimes.

If only Adam and Eve had been punished, one could strive to save the conduct of God from the reproach of malignity and injustice.

But it is claimed that the entire race of men was cursed for this mistake, and that we all carry the burden of Adam’s sin, a burden that is no less than our eternal damnation. 

- Émilie du Châtelet

"Science is a lot like sex. Sometimes something useful comes of it, but that’s not the reason we’re doing it."
-

Richard Feynman

Beyond the humor, it might be good to realize that curiosity (like lust) is no moral absolute… it has evolved via natural selection like everything else.

(via memeengine)

"

All our science, measured against reality,

is primitive and childlike - and yet it is

the most precious thing we have.

"
- Albert Einstein (via astrotastic)

"‘He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead…’"
- Albert Einstein (via lookingforether)

So, the right laws of physics. They’re beautifully balanced. If the weak force had been a little bit different, then carbon and oxygen wouldn’t be stable inside the hearts of stars, and there would be none of that in the universe.  […]  It makes me really feel that that civilization, which, as I say, is, if you believe the scientific creation story, has emerged purely as a result of the laws of physics and a few hydrogen atoms. Then I think, to me anyway, it makes me feel incredibly valuable.

—Brian Cox, TED Talks, “What Really Goes on at the Large Hadron Collider”