23 quotes
It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form.
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
The scientific work of Georges Lemaître (1968)
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.
The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature (1963)
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 the case of poetry, it's the exact opposite!
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns : A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists (1958)
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics As The Language Of Nature (1982)
If a picture exists, so much the better; but whether a picture exists or not is a matter of only secondary importance.
The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1958)
I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it.
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.
The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature (1963)
If there is no complete agreement between the results of one's work and the experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged.
If you are receptive and humble, mathematics will lead you by the hand.
The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been dealt with by many authors, and I do not want to discuss it here. I want to deal with more fundamental things.
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.
Dirac: A Scientific Biography (1990)
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.
The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature (1963)
The successful development of science requires a proper balance between the method of building up from observations and the method of deducing by pure reasoning from speculative assumptions...
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.
I don't suppose that applies so much to other physicists; I think it’s 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.
A geodesic that is not a null geodesic has the property that ∫ds, taken along a section of the track with the end points P and Q, is stationary if one makes a small variation of the track keeping the end points fixed.
I want to emphasize the necessity for a sound mathematical basis for any fundamental physical theory. Any philosophical ideas that one may have play only a subordinate role. Unless such ideas have a mathematical basis they will be ineffective.
The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory (1978)
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.
With my assumption... life need never end. There is no decisive argument for deciding between [certain] assumptions. I prefer the one that allows the possibility of endless life. One may hope that some day the question will be decided by direct observation.