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

by Richard P. Feynman

I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I’m trying to understand: I keep making up examples.

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.

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.