Quotes from Graham Farmelo

During the meeting in Delhi with Dirac on 12 January 1955, Nehru asked him if he had any recommendations for the future of the new republic of India. After his usual reflective pause, Dirac replied: 'A common language, preferably English. Peace with Pakistan. The metric system.

I have heard experimental physicist complain sotto voce that some of the best theoreticians have largely stopped doing physics and started to indulge in what is sometimes described as 'mathematical masturbation'.

It is only human for physicists to be disappointed that decades of preparation have not yet led to experimental discoveries. Yet nature is under no obligation to reward every generation of physicists with another helping of it's juiciest secrets, along with the fulfilment that also follows, not to mention the approbation.

Dirac said nothing to his fellow pedestrians, but Kierkegaard would startle some of them by interrogating them about some subject on his mind, following in the tradition of Socrates, whom he called 'the virtuoso of the casual encounter'.