Dirac, Paul

"The universe does not care about our preferences; it follows its own laws."

"To understand nature, you must speak her language: mathematics."

"The mark of a great scientist is the ability to see what others overlook."

"Fundamental discoveries often come from daring to ask forbidden questions."

"Nature's secrets are written in mathematical symbols of perfect elegance."

"The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known."

"It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, if one has really succeeded in getting an equation that is beautiful, then one is on a strong line of working."

"A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one."

"The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be."

"Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense."

"In science one should not work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether they really exist."

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

"One should look for what is simple and obvious in nature."

"Religion is a matter for the individual conscience, but it must not be allowed to dictate to science."

"The poet and the scientist are both trying to express profound truths in as compressed a form as possible."

"Education should aim at destroying our wrong sentimental attitudes toward nature."

"The most general principle of quantum mechanics is the superposition principle."

"One's own thoughts are not enough; we must think of what other people are thinking too."

"It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment."

"The analogy with a woman might be not accurate."

"I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy."

"Dirac's equation is beautiful; it is beautiful because it works."

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents, but rather because they eventually die."

"All the fifty million laws and regulations in the world cannot change the human heart."

"Time is a dimension like the others."

"The beautiful thing about understanding one subject deeply is that you can then understand all subjects."

"I believe it is desirable to separate the question of the correctness of a theory from the question of its applications."

"Simple philosophical ideas lie at the basis of all our observations."

"Nothing must be introduced into the science which is not directly observed and universally agreed upon."

"Numbers are human inventions but mathematical truths are universal."