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 More Quotes by Paul Dirac More Quotes From Paul Dirac Well, in the first place, it leads to great anxiety as to whether it's going to be correct or not ... I expect that's the dominating feeling. It gets to be rather a fever... At age 60, when asked about his feelings on discovering the Dirac equation. Paul Dirac anxietyfeelingsscience I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics. Paul Dirac sightscienceinteresting I admired Bohr very much. We had long talks together, long talks in which Bohr did practically all the talking. Paul Dirac talkingsciencelong There is in my opinion a great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behavior of the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world. Paul Dirac atomsopinionworld Theoretical physicists accept the need for mathematical beauty as an act of faith... For example, the main reason why the theory of relativity is so universally accepted is its mathematical beauty. Paul Dirac examplescienceneeds 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 mechanicquantumtrying It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory. Paul Dirac takenviewsscience Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics. Paul Dirac mechanicchemistryphysics I think it is the general rule that the originator of a new idea is not the most suitable person to develop it, because his fears of something going wrong are really too strong... At age 69. Paul Dirac strongideasthinking The shortage of buyers, which the world is suffering from, is readily understood, not as due to people not wishing to obtain possession of goods, but as people being unwilling to part with something which might earn a regular income in exchange for those goods. Paul Dirac sufferingwishpeople This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. Paul Dirac In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. Paul Dirac poetrysciencepeopleway
