Quotes from Paul A.M. Dirac

If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty into one's equation, ... one is on a sure line of progress.

Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.

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.

Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress.

If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty into one's equation, ... one is on a sure line of progress.

People who equate all the different kinds of human activity to money are taking too primitive a view of things.

The mathematician plays a game in which he himself invents the rules while the physicist plays a game in which the rules are provided by nature, but 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

The successful development of science requires a proper balance to be maintained between the method of building up from observations and the method of deducing by pure reasoning from speculative assumptions.

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.

In the absence of experimental evidence, basic beliefs of theoretical physicists may initially have almost a religious flavor, guided by faith and aesthetics. Fortunately unlike religion, these beliefs soon face the hard test of experiment.

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.