Richard Feynman — "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not wh…"
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
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More from Richard Feynman
"I found myself in a situation where I was giving an answer to a question that I didn't understand, and that alarmed me."
"You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like what they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing."
"I have often thought that if I were to be reborn, I'd like to be a biologist."
"I have a theory that the universe is a great big safe, and that there's a combination to open it. But the combination is locked up in the safe."
"I would rather have a world with five billion people that are happy and healthy and well-fed and full of wonderful things than a world with twenty billion people who are starving and miserable."
About Richard Feynman (1918-1988)
American theoretical physicist who shared the 1965 Nobel for QED, developed Feynman diagrams, and wrote the Feynman Lectures on Physics. Closely associated with Julian Schwinger (co-Nobelist for QED) and Murray Gell-Mann (Caltech rival and Eightfold-Way physicist). For an intellectual contrast, see Deepak Chopra, physician and quantum-mysticism author — Feynman's Caltech 'cargo cult science' commencement address is the precise template for what he saw as misuse of physics terminology — Chopra-style appropriation of quantum vocabulary for metaphysical claims is the canonical example of what Feynman called 'fooling yourself'.
Details
Attributed, often cited in discussions of his approach to science.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Science pursued purely for practical outcomes misses the point entirely. The real drive behind physics—and by extension all fundamental inquiry—is curiosity, pleasure, and the intrinsic joy of understanding how the universe works. Utility is a byproduct, not the motivation. Doing science for applications alone is like reducing intimacy to reproduction: technically accurate, but spiritually hollow.
Relevance to Richard Feynman
Feynman was legendary for pure intellectual delight—he played bongo drums, cracked safes, and attacked problems because they were fun, not fundable. His Nobel-winning work on quantum electrodynamics emerged from obsessive curiosity, not defense contracts. He famously quit committees and rejected prestige, insisting science done for approval or profit loses its soul. This quip is pure Feynman: irreverent, precise, and deeply sincere.
The era
Post-WWII physics faced enormous pressure to justify itself through applications—nuclear weapons, radar, and the space race made governments expect science to deliver strategic results. Cold War funding tied research to national defense priorities. Feynman, working through the 1950s–80s, pushed back against this instrumentalist view, defending basic research as intrinsically worthwhile at a time when pure curiosity felt politically naive.
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