When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult and unhappy business. And so most of the time you're rather unhappy, actually, with this confusion. You can't penetrate this thing. Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it, the idea? And I get this feeling all the time that I'm an ape trying to put two sticks together. So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.


Video interview dated 1963

YouTube Richard Feynman explains the feeling of confusion

Richard Feynman Quotes

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult...

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult...

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult...

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult...