Using a number of anecdotes as examples, he covers a range of topics, including "faith healing, flying saucers, politics, psychic phenomena, TV commercials, and desert real estate".

[4] The Meaning of It All was generally well received by reviewers, although some said that the lectures did not translate into print very well and complained about the awkward sentence constructions in places resulting from the transcription from the audio recordings.

[4][10][11] In The Guardian Nicholas Lezard wrote that The Meaning of It All has almost no science in it, and that Feynman, two years before winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, gave these lectures to a non-specialist audience and spoke of "the principles of scientific methodology as if he was making a good wedding speech".

[11] Bruce Tierney said on the Book Page that it gives readers "the opportunity to take a fresh glimpse into the inner workings of one of the finest minds of our age", adding that Feynman "expounds on [...] issues with his characteristic energy and intellectual vigor".

[1] Nick Meyer wrote in the New York magazine that Feynman departs from his field of theoretical physics and "waxes philosophical" on "the strengths and limitations of scientific thought", using topics like "poverty, religion, and flying saucers" to illustrate his arguments.

[13] Eli Kintish in The Yale Review of Books complained that while the lectures "burn with the fuel of Feynman's enthusiasm", they are difficult to follow in places because of their lack of focus.

[5] David Goodstein, a physicist who attended the lectures in 1963, wrote in American Scientist that while the book has "some nuggets of pure Feynman gold", it is "badly dated and atrociously edited".