## Metadata - Author: [[Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings, and Albert R. Hibbs]] - Full Title: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - Category: #books ## Highlights - I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile! ([Location 465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=465)) - Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile. ([Location 870](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=870)) - Another time somebody gave a talk about poetry. He talked about the structure of the poem and the emotions that come with it; he divided everything up into certain kinds of classes. In the discussion that came afterwards, he said, “Isn’t that the same as in mathematics, Dr. Eisenhart?” Dr. Eisenhart was the dean of the graduate school and a great professor of mathematics. He was also very clever. He said, “I’d like to know what Dick Feynman thinks about it in reference to theoretical physics.” He was always putting me on in this kind of situation. I got up and said, “Yes, it’s very closely related. In theoretical physics, the analog of the word is the mathematical formula, the analog of the structure of the poem is the interrelationship of the theoretical bling-bling with the so-and-so”—and I went through the whole thing, making a perfect analogy. The speaker’s eyes were beaming with happiness. Then I said, “It seems to me that no matter what you say about poetry, I could find a way of making up an analog with any subject, just as I did for theoretical physics. I don’t consider such analogs meaningful.” ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=905)) - So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”—which is just another way of saying that you can’t. ([Location 945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=945)) - So right away I found out something about biology: it was very easy to find a question that was very interesting, and that nobody knew the answer to. In physics you had to go a little deeper before you could find an interesting question that people didn’t know. ([Location 983](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=983)) - When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: “We know all that!” “Oh,” I say, “you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you’ve had four years of biology.” They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes. ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1000)) - It would have been a fantastic and vital discovery if I had been a good biologist. But I wasn’t a good biologist. We had a good idea, a good experiment, the right equipment, but I screwed it up: I gave her infected ribosomes—the grossest possible error that you could make in an experiment like that. ([Location 1041](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1041)) - The other work on the phage I never wrote up—Edgar kept asking me to write it up, but I never got around to it. That’s the trouble with not being in your own field: You don’t take it seriously. ([Location 1049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1049)) - You have to understand that, in those days, people hardly knew what a physicist was. Einstein was known as a mathematician, for instance—so it was rare that anybody needed physicists. ([Location 1390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1390)) - It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best—summing it all up—without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed. ([Location 1513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1513)) - The trouble with playing a trick on a highly intelligent man like Mr. Teller is that the time it takes him to figure out from the moment that he sees there is something wrong till he understands exactly what happened is too damn small to give you any pleasure! ([Location 1694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1694)) - The lieutenant takes me to the colonel and repeats my remark. The colonel says, “Just five minutes,” and then he goes to the window and he stops and thinks. That’s what they’re very good at—making decisions. I thought it was very remarkable how a problem of whether or not information as to how the bomb works should be in the Oak Ridge plant had to be decided and could be decided in five minutes. So I have a great deal of respect for these military guys, because I never can decide anything very important in any length of time at all. ([Location 1749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1749)) - Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of Von Neumann’s advice. It’s made me a very happy man ever since. But it was Von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility! ([Location 1905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1905)) - I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can’t understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth…How far from here was 34th Street?…All those buildings, all smashed—and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they’d be making a new road, and I thought, they’re crazy, they just don’t understand, they don’t understand. Why are they making new things? It’s so useless. But, fortunately, it’s been useless for almost forty years now, hasn’t it? So I’ve been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I’m glad those other people had the sense to go ahead. ([Location 1964](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=1964)) - I DON’T believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological. ([Location 2415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=2415)) - During this period I would get offers from different places—universities and industry—with salaries higher than my own. And each time I got something like that I would get a little more depressed. I would say to myself, “Look, they’re giving me these wonderful offers, but they don’t realize that I’m burned out! Of course I can’t accept them. They expect me to accomplish something, and I can’t accomplish anything! I have no ideas…” Finally there came in the mail an invitation from the Institute for Advanced Study: Einstein…von Neumann…Wyl…all these great minds! They write to me, and invite me to be a professor there! And not just a regular professor. Somehow they knew my feelings about the Institute: how it’s too theoretical; how there’s not enough real activity and challenge. So they write, “We appreciate that you have a considerable interest in experiments and in teaching, so we have made arrangements to create a special type of professorship, if you wish: half professor at Princeton University, and half at the Institute.” Institute for Advanced Study! Special exception! A position better than Einstein, even! It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd! It was absurd. The other offers had made me feel worse, up to a point. They were expecting me to accomplish something. But this offer was so ridiculous, so impossible for me ever to live up to, so ridiculously out of proportion. The other ones were just mistakes; this was an absurdity! I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it. And then I thought to myself, “You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it’s impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!” It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing. It wasn’t a failure on my part that the Institute for Advanced Study expected me to be that good; it was impossible. It was clearly a mistake—and the moment I appreciated the possibility that they might be wrong, I realized that it was also true of all the other places, including my own university. I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they’re offering me some money for it, it’s their hard luck. Then, within the day, by some strange miracle—perhaps he overheard me talking about it, or maybe he just understood me—Bob Wilson, who was head of the laboratory there at Cornell, called me in to see him. He said, in a serious tone, “Feynman, you’re teaching your classes well; you’re doing a good job, and we’re very satisfied. Any other expectations we might have are a matter of luck. When we hire a professor, we’re taking all the risks. If it comes out good, all right. If it doesn’t, too bad. But you shouldn’t worry about what you’re doing or not doing.” He said it much better than that, and it released me from the feeling of guilt. Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a… ([Location 2526](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=2526)) - Note: Feynman gets an offer from the Institute for Advanced Studies. The unrealistic expectations of him helps him get over any feelings of responsibility for what people expect from him. - I started to walk into the bar, and I suddenly thought to myself, “Wait a minute! It’s the middle of the afternoon. There’s nobody here. There’s no social reason to drink. Why do you have such a terribly strong feeling that you have to have a drink?”—and I got scared. I never drank ever again, since then. I suppose I really wasn’t in any danger, because I found it very easy to stop. But that strong feeling that I didn’t understand frightened me. You see, I get such fun out of thinking that I don’t want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick. It’s the same reason that, later on, I was reluctant to try experiments with LSD in spite of my curiosity about hallucinations. ([Location 3019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=3019)) - I can’t understand anything in general unless I’m carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go. Some people think in the beginning that I’m kind of slow and I don’t understand the problem, because I ask a lot of these “dumb” questions: “Is a cathode plus or minus? Is an an-ion this way, or that way?” But later, when the guy’s in the middle of a bunch of equations, he’ll say something and I’ll say, “Wait a minute! There’s an error! That can’t be right!” The guy looks at his equations, and sure enough, after a while, he finds the mistake and wonders, “How the hell did this guy, who hardly understood at the beginning, find that mistake in the mess of all these equations?” He thinks I’m following the steps mathematically, but that’s not what I’m doing. I have the specific, physical example of what he’s trying to analyze, and I know from instinct and experience the properties of the thing. So when the equation says it should behave so-and-so, and I know that’s the wrong way around, I jump up and say, “Wait! There’s a mistake!” ([Location 3655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=3655)) - Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you. ([Location 3822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=3822)) - I thought of how we teach physics: We have so many techniques—so many mathematical methods—that we never stop telling the students how to do things. On the other hand, the drawing teacher is afraid to tell you anything. If your lines are very heavy, the teacher can’t say, “Your lines are too heavy,” because some artist has figured out a way of making great pictures using heavy lines. The teacher doesn’t want to push you in some particular direction. So the drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems. ([Location 3924](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=3924)) - I understood at last what art is really for, at least in certain respects. It gives somebody, individually, pleasure. You can make something that somebody likes so much that they’re depressed, or they’re happy, on account of that damn thing you made! In science, it’s sort of general and large: You don’t know the individuals who have appreciated it directly. ([Location 3990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=3990)) - There was a guy there at the county art museum named Maurice Tuchman who really knew what he was talking about when it came to art. He knew that I had had this one-man show at Caltech. He said, “You know, you’re never going to draw again.” “What? That’s ridiculous! Why should I never…” “Because you’ve had a one-man show, and you’re only an amateur.” Although I did draw after that, I never worked as hard, with the same energy and intensity, as I did before. I never sold a drawing after that, either. He was a smart fella, and I learned a lot from him. I could have learned a lot more, if I weren’t so stubborn! ([Location 4152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=4152)) - This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China’s nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China’s nose is, and you average it. And that would be very “accurate” because you averaged so many people. But it’s no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging. ([Location 4425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=4425)) - Sometime later I heard that the energy-makes-it-go book was going to be recommended by the curriculum commission to the Board of Education, so I made one last effort. At each meeting of the commission the public was allowed to make comments, so I got up and said why I thought the book was bad. The man who replaced me on the commission said, “That book was approved by sixty-five engineers at the Such-and-such Aircraft Company!” I didn’t doubt that the company had some pretty good engineers, but to take sixty-five engineers is to take a wide range of ability—and to necessarily include some pretty poor guys! It was once again the problem of averaging the length of the emperor’s nose, or the ratings on a book with nothing between the covers. It would have been far better to have the company decide who their better engineers were, and to have them look at the book. I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys—but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly! ([Location 4468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=4468)) - It’s one of those games I play. They want a receipt? I’m not giving them a receipt. Then you’re not going to get the money. OK, then I’m not taking the money. They don’t trust me? The hell with it; they don’t have to pay me. Of course it’s absurd! I know that’s the way the government works; well, screw the government! I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings. And unless I’m going to be treated like one, I’m not going to have anything to do with them! They feel bad? They feel bad. I feel bad, too. We’ll just let it go. ([Location 4491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003V1WXKU&location=4491))