Surely you must be joking mr feynman

• I don”t know whatš the matter with people: they don”t learn bz understanding: hez learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile.
• The electron is a theory that we use< it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.
• And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos.
• So while all the biology guys were trying to understand these new things *atoms, physics, mathematics, statistics), I could spend my time learning the biology part.
• One day he told me to stay after class. “Feynman,”, he said, “you talk too much and you make too much noise. I know why. You/re bored. So I’m going to give you a book. You go up there in the back, in the corner, and study this book, and when you know everything, thats in the book, you can talk again. He gave me the real works - Advanced Calculus - it was for junior or senior course in college.
• “what can i do to stop them from coming to my larder without killing the ants? No poison, you gotta be humane to the ants.”What I did was this: in preparatin, I put a bit of sugar about six or eight inches from their entry point into the room, that they didnt know about. Then I made those ferry things again, and whenever an ant returning with food walked onto my little ferry, Id carry him over and put him on the sugar. Any ant coming toward the larder that walked onto a ferry I also carried over to the sugar. Eventually the ants found their way from the sugar to their hole, so this new trail was being goubly reinforced, while the old trail was being used less and less. I knew that after half an hour or so the old trail would dry up, and in an hour they were out of my larder. I didnt wash the floor: I didnt do anything but ferry ants.
• In other words, the experimental physicistst had nothing to do until their buildings and apparatus were ready, so they just built the buildings - or assisted in building the buildings.
• You musty have been in a situation like this when you didnt ask them right away. Right away it would have been OK. But now theyve been talking a little bit too long. You hesitated to long. If you ask them now theyll say, “What are you wasting my time all this time for?”
• Well, Mr Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers noe knows about. Its a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you pley with them. They are so wonderful. You ahve theses switches - if its an even number you do this, if its an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine. After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasnt paying any attention: he wasnt supervising anybody. … But if youve ever worked with comoputers, you understand the disease - the delight in being able to see how much you can do.
• Special engineers - clever boys from high school. Thez would tell them nothing. They came to work on IBM machines - punching holes, numbers that they didnt understand. Nobody told them what it was. The thing was going very slowly. I said that the first thing there has to be is that these echnical guys know what were doing. They were all excited: “Were fighting a war! We see what it is!”... Nearly ten times as fast. (If you work for a purpose)
• Then the son totld me what happened. The last ttime he was there, Bohr said to his son, Remember the name of that little fellow in the back over there? Hes the only guy whos not afraid of me, and will say when Ive got a crazy idea. So nnext time when we watnt to discuss ideas, were not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everyghing is yes, yes, Dr Bohr. Get that guy and well talk with him first.
• The next time I went to Oak Ridge, all the secretaries and people who knew who I was were telling me, “Dont come through here. Dont come through here!”The colonel had sent a note around to everyone in the plant which said, “During his last visit, was Mr Feynman at any time in your office, near your office, or walking through your office?” 
• I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing. Whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. Id invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. … so i got this new attitude. Ill never accomplish anything. Ive got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoz, and just like I read the Arabian Night for pleasure, Im going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
• Ok he says. The whole principle is this: The guy wants to be a gentleman. He doesnt want to be thought of as imploite, crude, or especially a cheapskate. As long as the girl knows the guys motives so well, its easy to steeer him in the direction she wants him to go. Therefore, he continued, under no circumstance be a gentleman. You must disrespect the girls. Furthermore, the very first tule is, dont buy a girl anything / not even a package of cigarettes / until youve asked her if shell sleep with tou, and youre conviced that she will, and that shes not lying.
• One day, about 3:30 in the afternoon, I was walking along the sidewalk opporsite the beach at Copacabana past a bar. I suddenly got thit TreMENdous, strong feeling:” Thats just what I want: thathll fit just right. Id just love to have a drink right now. I started to walk into the bar, and I suddenly thought to myself. Wait a minute! Its the middle of the afternoon. Theres nobodz here. Theres 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 wasnt in any danger, because I found it very easy to stop. But that strong feeling that I didnt understand frightened me. You see, I get such fun out of thinking that I dont want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.
• Then, as now, Las Vegas made its money on the people who gamble, so the whole problem for the hotels was to get people to come there to gamble. So they had shows and dinners which were very inexpensive / amost free. You didnt have to make any reservations for anything: You could walk in, sit down at one of the many empty tables, and enjoy the show. It was just wonderful for a man who didnt gamble, because I was enjozing all the advantages - the rooms were inexpensive, the meals were next to nothing, the shows were good, and I liked the girls.
• The first time I was in Las Vegas I sata down and figured out the odds for everything, and I discovered that the odds for the crap table were something like .493. If I bet a dollar, it would only cost me 1.4 cents. So I thought to myself. “Why am I so reluctant to bet? It hardly costs anything!” So I started betting, and right away I lost five dollars in succession - one, two, three, four, five. I was supposed to be out only seven cents< instead, I was five dollars behind! Ive never gambled since then. Im very lucky that I started off loosing.
• But I decided then to never decide again. Nothing - absolutely nothing - would ever change my mind again. When youre young, you have all these things wo worry about - should you go there, what about your mother, And you worry and try to decide, but then something else comes up. Its much easier to just plain decide. Never mind - nothing is goinog to change your mind. I did that once when I was a student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again - I had the solution to that problem.
• And the reason that nobody got anywhere in that conference was that they hadnt clearly defined the subject of … and tehrefore no one knew exactly what they were supposed to talk about.
• Somewhere on the second day the stenotypist came up to me and said, “What profession are you? Surely not a professor.” “I am a professor,” I said. “Of what?” “Of Physics - science.” “Oh, that must the reason.” he said. “Reason for what?” He said, “You see, Im a stenotypist, and I ytpe everything that is saaid here. Now, when the other fellas talk, I type what they say, but I dont understand what theyre saygin. But every time you get up to ask a question or to say something, I understand exactly what you mean - what the question is, and what youre saying - so I thtought you cant be a professor.
• There were a lot of fools at that conference - pompous fools - and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right: you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools - guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people, as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus - THAT I CANNOT STAND!
• It turned out the other members of the commitee had done a lot of work in giving out the books and collecting reports, and had gone to sessins in which the book publishers would explain the books before they read them: I was the only guy on that comission who read all the books and didnt get any informatin from the book publishers except what was in the books themselves, the things that would ultimatelz go to the schools.
• The ambassador answered in a way I like to hear> “I dont know, he said. I might suppose something, but I dont know if its true.