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Paul Dirac quotes - page 2
If you are receptive and humble, mathematics will lead you by the hand. Again and again, when I have been at a loss how to proceed, I have just had to wait until I have felt the mathematics led me by the hand. It has led me along an unexpected path, a path where new vistas open up, a path leading to new territory, where one can set up a base of operations, from which one can survey the surroundings and plan future progress.
Paul Dirac
Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress.
Paul Dirac
As time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen.
Paul Dirac
No. I had successfully solved the difficulty of finding a description of the electron which was consistent with both relativity and quantum mechanics. Of course, when you solve one difficulty, other new difficulties arise. You then try to sove them. You can never solve all difficulties at once.
Paul Dirac
If we are honest - and scientists have to be - we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination.
Paul Dirac
It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power.
Paul Dirac
Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future.
Paul Dirac
It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form.
Paul Dirac
I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition.
Paul Dirac
It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.
Paul Dirac
A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.
Paul Dirac
There are always more people who prefer to speak than to listen.
Paul Dirac
Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence.
Paul Dirac
I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.
Paul Dirac
A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.
Paul Dirac
If there is a God, he's a great mathematician.
Paul Dirac
I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say ... something that everyone knows already in words that nobody can understand. Commenting to him about the poetry J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote.
Paul Dirac
It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.
Paul Dirac
A termination of one's life is necessary in the scheme of things to provide a logical reason for unselfishness. . . . The fact that there is an end to one's life compels one to take an interest in things that will continue to live after one is dead.
Paul Dirac
What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.
Paul Dirac
When [Erwin Schrödinger] went to the Solvay conferences in Brussels, he would walk from the station to the hotel where the delegates stayed, carrying all his luggage in a rucksack and looking so like a tramp that it needed a great deal of argument at the reception desk before he could claim a room.
Paul Dirac
Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind and there is no limit to its power in this field.
Paul Dirac
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