Richard Feynman

Feynman On Flying Saucers

I had a conversation about flying saucers some years ago with "laymen". You see, because I'm "scientific", they think I know all about flying saucers!

So, I said "I don't think there are flying saucers."

My antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers?! Can you prove that it's impossible?"

I said, "No, I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely."

"That", they say, "is very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible, then how can you say it's unlikely?"

But, that's the way it is, scientifically. It is scientific only to say what's more likely or less likely, and not to be proving all the time what's possible or impossible.

To define what I mean, I finally said to him, "Listen. I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the result of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence."

The last statement has also been reported as "UFOs are better explained in terms of the unknown irrational characteristics of terrestrial beings rather than by any unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial beings."

Attributed

• Don't worry about anything... Go out and have a good time.

• 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 any purpose —which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

• I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.

• Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

• Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

• Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

• Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts

• 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.