I believe that Mr. Feynman had something very special in him… something very strong… something very pure. It was curiosity—his sheer love for puzzles, for physics, for science. He sought joy in his work and found it in abundance. His dedication to his interests was not just his job; it was his lifestyle. It reflected in his work, in his jokes, in the pranks he played on others, in the innumerable safes, locks, drawers, and cabinets that he mischievously broke into. It was embedded in all the arithmetic problems he solved—all those cube roots and complex divisions.

During his middle age, he helped the U.S.A. in the atomic project. The fear of Germans figuring it out first loomed large, so he volunteered to help build the bomb—one of the vices of science, a madness fueled by patriotism and curiosity. He was excited to work with some of the greatest minds of the time—Bohr, Einstein, Fermi, Lawrence, Pauli.

But does that make him morally horrible? Even a little? Entirely? Could be.

One day, he decided to quit drinking because he believed that alcohol would destroy his most precious machine—the brain—that made life such an exhilarating experience. It was for the same reason that, despite his curiosity about hallucinations, he later hesitated to experiment with LSD.