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I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

Richard Feynman (attributed)

Science

The story behind the card

The line is widely credited to Richard Feynman (1918–1988), the American physicist who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics, the theory of how light and matter interact. No one has found it in his books, lectures or recorded interviews. It survives because it sounds like him. In the 1981 BBC Horizon film The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, he said he could live with doubt and not knowing, and found that far more interesting than holding answers that might be wrong.

Türkçe oku
Sorgulanamayan cevaplara sahip olmaktansa cevaplanamayan sorulara sahip olmayı yeğlerim.
Richard Feynman (atfedilir)

Söz yaygın olarak Richard Feynman'a (1918–1988) mal edilir. Ama ışıkla maddenin nasıl etkileştiğini açıklayan kuantum elektrodinamiği üzerine çalışmalarıyla 1965 Nobel Fizik Ödülü'nü paylaşan bu Amerikalı fizikçinin kitaplarında, derslerinde ya da kayıtlı söyleşilerinde bugüne dek bulunamadı. Yine de ona çok yakışır. BBC'nin Horizon dizisi için 1981'de çekilen The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Bir Şeyleri Keşfetmenin Keyfi) filminde Feynman, kuşkuyla ve bilmemekle yaşayabildiğini, bunu yanlış olabilecek cevaplara sahip olmaktan çok daha ilginç bulduğunu söylemişti.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Richard Feynman
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Less than 66 years, well within a single lifetime, separate the first powered aeroplane flight from the first Moon landing. Orville Wright flew for 12 seconds and 37 metres on 17 December 1903; Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969.

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George Orwell used the phrase “cold war” in 1945, and the American journalist Walter Lippmann made it popular in 1947. Because nuclear weapons made open war between the superpowers too dangerous, the rivalry spread into other arenas. After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the United States passed the National Defense Education Act of 1958 to fund science, maths and language teaching. In 1959, at an American exhibition in Moscow, Vice-President Richard Nixon and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev argued about capitalism and communism in a model kitchen, an exchange remembered as the Kitchen Debate. In 1972 in Reykjavík, the American Bobby Fischer beat the Soviet champion Boris Spassky for the world chess title. The Olympics were boycotted in turn: the United States and many allies stayed away from Moscow in 1980, and most of the Soviet bloc from Los Angeles in 1984.

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