Paul Dirac Quotes About Physics

Quotes about: Physics

• 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

  Writing, Men, Poetry

• 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

  Lying, Science, Law

• 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

  Numbers, Theoretical Physics, Essentials

• Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics.

  Paul Dirac

  Chemistry, Physics, Mechanic

• 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

  Law, Too Much, Chemistry

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.391, Cambridge University Press

• A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.

  Paul Dirac

  Book, Math, Physics

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.457, Cambridge University Press

• 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

  Good Luck, Science, Mathematical Equations

• 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

  Theoretical Physics, Unnecessary, Mechanic

• 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

  Science, Sight, Interesting

• 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

  Science, Discovery, People

  "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature" by Paul Dirac, blogs.scientificamerican.com. May 1963.

• 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

  Writing, Men, Physics

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