Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Dirac
Age: 82 †
Born: 1902
Born: August 8
Died: 1984
Died: October 20
Academic
Educator
Engineer
Mathematician
Physicist
Professor
Scientist
Teacher
Theoretical Physicist
Bristol
Gloucestershire
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
Paul A M Dirac
P A M Dirac
P. A. M. Dirac
Science
Connected
Concentrate
Doe
Sight
Mathematical
Firsts
Physical
Physics
First
Theory
Appear
Even
Instead
Basis
Learnt
Trust
Bases
Scheme
Getting
Mathematics
Distrust
Interesting
Concepts
Schemes

More quotes by Paul Dirac

Image
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
Image
There are always more people who prefer to speak than to listen.
Paul Dirac
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics.
Paul Dirac
Image
Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress.
Paul Dirac
Image
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
Image
A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.
Paul Dirac
Image
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
Image
Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence.
Paul Dirac
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.
Paul Dirac
Image
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