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Paul Dirac

31 quotes

“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 (1902–1984) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character, Vol. 123, No. 792 (6 April 1929)
“At the beginning of time the laws of Nature were probably very different from what they are now. Thus we should consider the laws of Nature as continually changing with the epoch, instead of as holding uniformly throughout space-time. This idea was first put forward by Milne, who worked it out on... assumptions... not very satisfying... we should expect them also to depend on position in space, in order to preserve the beautiful idea of the theory of relativity [that] there is fundamental similarity between space and time.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Relation between Mathematics and Physics (Feb. 6, 1939) Proceedings of the Royal Society (Edinburgh) Vol. 59, 1938-39, Part II, pp. 122-129.
“One possibility in this direction is to regard, classically, an electron as the end of a single Faraday line of force. The electric field in this picture from discrete Faraday lines of force, which are to be treated as physical things, like strings. One has then to develop a dynamics for such a string like structure, and quantize it.... In such a theory a bare electron would be inconceivable, since one cannot imagine the end of a piece of string without having the string.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bombay Lectures (1955)
“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!”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Brighter Than a Thousand Suns : A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists (1958) by Robert Jungk, as translated by James Cleugh, p. 22
“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.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Untitled, Nature (1961) Vol. 192, p. 441, as quoted by , The Physics of Immortality (1994) p. 11. Described as Dirac's Postulate of Eternal Life
“It was a good description to say that it was a game, a very interesting game one could play. Whenever one solved one of the little problems, one could write a paper about it. It was very easy in those days for any second-rate physicist to do first-rate work. There has not been such a glorious time since then.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Describing the state of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. From Directions in Physics (New York: John Wiley, 1978), p. 7.
“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.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Dr. P. A. M. Dirac by Thomas S. Kuhn at Dirac's home, Cambridge, England, May 7, 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.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature," Scientific American (May, 1963)
“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 (1902–1984) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The scientific work of Georges Lemaître (1968), P.A.M. Dirac, Commentarii (Pontifical Academy of Sciences), vol 2, 11, pp. 1–18.
“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.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory (1978)
“My research work was based in pictures. I needed to visualise things and projective geometry was often most useful e.g. in figuring out how a particular quantity transforms under Lorentz transf[ormation]. When I came to publish the results I suppressed the projective geometry as the results could be expressed more concisely in analytic form.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Recollections of an Exciting Era," three lectures given at Varenna, 5 August 1972, quoted in Peter Galison, "The Suppressed Drawing: Paul Dirac's Hidden Geometry", Representations, No. 72 (Autumn, 2000)
“It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. Some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes made in passing from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. Some day a new quantum mechanics, a relativistic one, will be discovered, in which we will not have these infinities occurring at all. It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Early Years of Relativity" in Albert Einstein : Historical and Cultural Perspectives : The Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem (1979) edited by Gerald James Holton and Yehuda Elkana, p. 85
“God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics As The Language Of Nature (1982) by Heinz R. Pagels, p. 295; also in Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac : Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990) edited by Behram N. Kursunoglu…
“A good deal of my research work in physics has consisted in not setting out to solve some particular problems, but simply examining mathematical quantities of a kind that physicists use and trying to get 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 that the work does have an application. Then one has had good luck.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P.A.M. Dirac, "Pretty Mathematics," International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 21, Issue 8–9, August 1982, p. 603
“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.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P. A. M. Dirac, The inadequacies of quantum field theory, in Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, B. N. Kursunoglu and E. P. Wigner (Cambridge University, Cambridge, 1987) p. 194.
“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 (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Dirac: A Scientific Biography (1990), by Helge Kragh, p. 258{{cite book
“I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Michael Berry, "Paul Dirac: the purest soul in physics" Physics World (1998)
“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 (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (2009) by Graham Farmelo, p. 435
“I have the best of reasons for being an admirer of Werner Heisenberg. He and I were young research students at the same time, about the same age, working on the same problem. Heisenberg succeeded where I failed. There was a large mass of spectroscopic data accumulated at that time and Heisenberg found out the proper way of handling it. In doing so he started the golden age in theoretical physics, and for a few years after that it was easy for any second rate student to do first rate work.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a Life of Physics. Evening Lectures at the International Centre of Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. IAEA, Vienna 1968, p. 32.
“... we cannot observe a small system with that amount of detail which classical theory supposes. The limitation in the power of observation puts a limitation on the number of data that can be assigned to a state... A state of a system may be defined as an undisturbed motion that is restricted by as many conditions or data as are theoretically possible without mutual interference or contradiction.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nature of the relationships which the superposition principle requires to exist between the states of any system is of a kind that cannot be explained in terms of familiar physical concepts. One cannot in the classical sense picture a system being partly in each of two states and see the equivalence of this to the system being completely in some other state. There is an entirely new idea involved, to which one must get accustomed and in terms of which one must proceed to build up an exact mathematical theory, without having any detailed classical picture.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“{\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }{\delta \left({x}\right){d{x}}}}=1 \delta \left({x}\right)=0 \text{ for } x\not= 0”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further development of the theory.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. A good many people are working on the mathematical basis of quantum theory, trying to understand the theory better and to make it more powerful and more beautiful. 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.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards — in heaven if not on earth — all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks made during the Fifth Solvay International Conference (October 1927), as quoted in Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations (1971) by Werner Heisenberg, pp. 85-86; these comments prompted the famous rema…
“I went back to Cambridge at the beginning of October, 1925, and resumed my previous style of life, intense thinking about these problems during the week and relaxing on Sunday, going for a long walk in the country alone... It was during one of the Sunday walks in October, 1925, when I was thinking very much about this uv - vu, in spite of my intention to relax, that I thought about Poisson brackets. I remembered something which I had read up previously in advanced books of dynamics about these strange quantities, Poisson brackets, and from what I could remember, there seemed to be a close similarity between a Poisson bracket of two quantities, u and v, and the commutator uv - vu. The idea first came in a flash, I suppose, and provided of course some excitement, and then of course came the reaction "No, this is probably wrong." I did not remember very well the precise formula for a Poisson bracket, and only had some vague recollections. But there were exciting possibilities there, and I thought that I might be getting to some big new idea... it was a Sunday evening then and the libraries were all closed. I just had to wait impatiently through that night without knowing whether this idea was really any good or not, but still I think that my confidence gradually grew during the course of the night. The next morning I hurried along to one of the libraries as soon as it was open, and then I looked up Poisson brackets in Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics, and I found that they were just what I needed.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Recollections of an Exciting Era", in History of Twentieth Century Physics, Proceedings of the International School of Physics Enrico Fermi (New York Academic Press, 1977), pp. 137-138
“Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ever-widening range of dynamical systems, including the electromagnetic field in interaction with matter. The underlying ideas and the laws governing their application form a simple and elegant scheme, which one would be inclined to think could not be seriously modified without having all its attractive features spout. Nevertheless it has been found possible to set up a new scheme, called quantum mechanics, which is more suitable for the description of phenomena on the atomic scale and which is in some respects more elegant and satisfying than the classical scheme. This possibility is due to the changes which the new scheme involves being of a very profound character and not clashing with the features of the classical theory that make it so attractive, as a result of which all these features can be incorporated in the new scheme.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We may define an object to be big when the disturbance accompanying our observation of it may be neglected, and small when the disturbance cannot be neglected... In order to give an absolute meaning to size, such as is required for any theory of the ultimate structure of matter, we have to assume that there is a limit to the fineness of our powers of observation and the smallness of the accompanying disturbance... If the object under observation is such that the unavoidable limiting disturbance is negligible, then the object is big in the absolute sense and we may apply classical mechanics to it. If, on the other hand, the limiting disturbance is not negligible, then the object is small in the absolute sense and we require a new theory for dealing with it.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reader.. may argue that a very strange idea has been introduced — the possibility of a photon being partly in each of two states of polarization, or partly in each of two separate beams — but even with the help of this strange idea no satisfying picture of the fundamental single-photon processes has been given... it may be remarked that the main object of physical science is not the provision of pictures, but is the formulation of laws governing phenomena and the application of these laws to the discovery of new phenomena. If a picture exists, so much the better; but whether a picture exists or not is a matter of only secondary importance. In the case of atomic phenomena no picture can be expected to exist in the usual sense of the word 'picture', by which is meant a model functioning essentially on classical lines. One may, however, extend the meaning of the word 'picture' to include any way of looking at the fundamental laws which makes their self-consistency obvious. With this extension, one may gradually acquire a picture of atomic phenomena by becoming familiar with the laws of the quantum theory.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... people have tried to establish analogies with systems in classical mechanics, such as vibrating strings or membranes... Such analogies have led to the name 'Wave Mechanics' being sometimes given to quantum mechanics. It is important to remember, however, that the superposition that occurs in quantum mechanics is of an essentially different nature from any occurring in the classical theory, as is shown by the fact that the quantum superposition principle demands indeterminacy in the results of observations in order to be capable of a sensible physical interpretation. The analogies are thus liable to be misleading.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. 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. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source