Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

by Richard P. Feynman

If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy. If it looked good, I said it looked good. Simple proposition.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

“I don’t like your face. I think I’ll push it in.”

Then I felt a sort of funny crunching in my eye—it didn’t hurt much—and the next thing I know, I’m slamming the son of a gun right back, automatically. It was remarkable for me to discover that I didn’t have to think; the “machinery” knew what to do.

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.

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!

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.