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Paul Dirac Quotes - Page 1

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If there is a God, he's a great mathematician.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
If There Is A God
Ifs
Math
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A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Law
Mathematical
Mathematical Beauty
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God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
God
Beautiful
Creating
Mathematics
Sensual
Used
World
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Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Inspirational
Life
Nature
Earth
Flower
Stars
You
Star
Farthest
Move
Pick
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There are always more people who prefer to speak than to listen.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Communication
People
Speak
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Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Chemistry
Mechanic
Physics
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Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Progress
Scientific Progress
Units
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A great deal of my work is just playing with equations and seeing what they give.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Biographies
Giving
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It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Fit
Important
Mathematical Equations
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Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Chains
Progress
Way
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Hopes are always accompanied by fears, and, in scientific research, the fears are liable to become dominant.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Liable
Research
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A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Book
Math
Physics
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I admired Bohr very much. We had long talks together, long talks in which Bohr did practically all the talking.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Long
Talking
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A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Data
Fit
Ugly
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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 / Physicist
Men
Frontiers
Opposition
Physics
Writing
Work Time Poetry
Same Time
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I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Equations
Understanding
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The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Greatness
Ideas
Research
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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.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Religion
Atheism
Reality
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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 / Physicist
Power
Math
Tools
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The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Branches
Essentials
Features
Numbers
Physics
Theoretical
Theoretical Physics
Applicable
Essential
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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 / Physicist
Nature
Science
Interesting
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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 / Physicist
Poetry
Science
Understood
Science People Way
Opposite
Everyone
Before
Ever
Exact
Exact Opposite
Such A Way
Tell
Tries
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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 is the exact opposite.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Opposites
People
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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.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Beauty
Equations
Insight
Mathematical Equations
Point Of View
Progress
Seems
Sound
Views
Sure
Working
Line
Point
View
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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.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Mathematics
Order
Used
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The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Simple
Two
Way
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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 / Physicist
Atoms
Confronting
Economic
Mysterious
Opinion
Similarity
World
Atom
In My Opinion
Present
Paradoxes
Provided
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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 / Physicist
Ideas
Strong
Thinking
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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 / Physicist
Science
Example
Needs
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I think it is a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don't have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do. At age 60.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Beautiful
Thinking
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The only object of theoretical physics is to calculate results that can be compared with experiment... it is quite unnecessary that any satisfactory description of the whole course of the phenomena should be given.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Mechanic
Theoretical Physics
Unnecessary
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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 / Physicist
Facts
Life Is
Reason
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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 / Physicist
Science
Anxiety
Feelings
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I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognise from the beginning as of unequal value.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Equality
Economic
Recognise
Trying
Two
Would Be
Beginning
Cause
Economic System
Maintain
Suggest
Value
Tries
Troubles
Unequal
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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 / Physicist
Buyers
Goods
Income
People
Possession
Shortage
Suffering
Understood
Wish
World People Something
World Suffering People
Exchange
Due
Earn
Obtain
Readily
Regular
Wishing
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The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Application
Chemistry
Difficulty
Equations
Law
Lying
Mathematical
Physics
Treatment
Whole
Part
Complex
Fact
Fundamental
Fundamental Laws
Large
Large Part
Lies
Necessary
Solved
Thus
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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 / Physicist
Science
Interesting
Sight
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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 / Physicist
Mechanic
Quantum
Trying
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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 / Physicist
Science
Biographies
Rooms
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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 / Physicist
Art
Appreciate
People
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It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one's culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on...But mathematical beauty is of a rather different kind. I should say perhaps it is of a completely different kind and transcends these personal factors. It is the same in all countries and at all periods of time.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Country
Different
Doe
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The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Law
Simplicity
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I found the best ideas usually came, not when one was actively striving for them, but when one was in a more relaxed state… I used to take long solitary walks on Sundays, during which I tended to review the current situation in a leisurely way. Such occasions often proved fruitful, even though (or perhaps, because) the primary purpose of the walk was relaxation and not research.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Ideas
Long
Sunday
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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 / Physicist
Men
Poetry
Writing
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A good deal of my research in physics has consisted in not setting out to solve some particular problem, but simply examining mathematical equations of a kind that physicists use and trying to fit them together in an interesting way, regardless of any application that the work may have. It is simply a search for pretty mathematics. It may turn out later to have an application. Then one has good luck. At age 78.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Good Luck
Mathematical Equations
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Renormalization is just a stop-gap procedure. There must be some fundamental change in our ideas, probably a change just as fundamental as the passage from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. When you get a number turning out to be infinite which ought to be finite, you should admit that there is something wrong with your equations, and not hope that you can get a good theory just by doctoring up that number.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Ideas
Numbers
Orbit
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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 / Physicist
Hands
Humble
Loss
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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... If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them... My own belief is that this is a more likely line of progress than trying to guess at physical pictures.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Science
Discovery
People
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The physicist, in his study of natural phenomena, has two methods of making progress: (1) the method of experiment and observation, and (2) the method of mathematical reasoning. The former is just the collection of selected data; the latter enables one to infer results about experiments that have not been performed. There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Data
Math
Practice
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The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.
Paul Dirac / Physicist
Chemistry
Law
Too Much
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