I Learnt To Distrust All Physical Concepts

The Physicist, In His Study Of Natural Phenomena, Has Two Methods Of Making Progress: (1) The Method Of Experiment And Observation, And (2) The Method Of Mathematical Reasoning. The Former Is Just The Collection Of Selected Data; The Latter Enables One To Infer Results About Experiments That Have Not Been Performed. There Is No Logical Reason Why The Second Method Should Be Possible At All, But One Has Found In Practice That It Does Work And Meets With Reasonable Success.

Theoretical Physicists Accept The Need For Mathematical Beauty As An Act Of Faith... For Example, The Main Reason Why The Theory Of Relativity Is So Universally Accepted Is Its Mathematical Beauty.

I Think It Is 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. At Age 60.

Scientific Progress Is Measured In Units Of Courage, Not Intelligence.

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.