“Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.”

Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 6, “Probability and Uncertainty — the Quantum Mechanical View of Nature,” p. 127-128

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just …" by Richard Feynman?
Richard Feynman photo
Richard Feynman 181
American theoretical physicist 1918–1988

Related quotes

Eugene J. Martin photo
Francis Bacon photo
Anna Sui photo

“The sexiest thing about a bikini is that it leaves something to the imagination, which is the best part.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

via WeConnectFashion. "USA Swimwear Market Research Report 2015". WeConnectFashion (2015). https://www.weconnectfashion.com/articles/usa-swimwear-market-research-report-2015

Jacob Bronowski photo

“Human beings can imagine situations which are different from those in front of their eyes… because they make and hold in their minds images for absent things.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

Karel Zeman photo

“With the vast sweep of his imagination Jules Verne created a whole world of magical things imbued with a delightful naiveté, which just charm us…”

Karel Zeman (1910–1989) Czech film director, artist and animator

Veliká fantazie Julesa Vernea vytvořila svět, kouzelný svět plný rozkošné naivity, která je tolik půvabná...
Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/en/karel-zeman/quotes and Czech http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/cz/karel-zeman/citaty).

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4–5
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Context: Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Richard Bach photo

“Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect.
Then be sure of one thing:
The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Karl Pearson photo
Jasper Fforde photo

Related topics