If all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible?
Interpretation
This quote highlights the vast potential and possibilities beyond the physical components that make up the universe.
Richard P. Feynman reflects on the fundamental nature of reality, suggesting that if even something as seemingly simple as a stream of water can be reduced to mere atoms, then the universe must hold limitless potential for complexity and depth. This perspective challenges us to consider the myriad possibilities that exist beyond the surface of the material world.
In practice
During a lecture on the nature of existence.
The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
Let us not forget such words, and all they mean, as hatred, bitterness, and rancor greed, intolerance, bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to man, his right to be himself and free.
The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.
As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.
Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.
Tao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone.
When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.
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