I Found The Best Ideas Usually Came,

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.

What Makes The Theory Of Relativity So Acceptable To Physicists In Spite Of Its Going Against The Principle Of Simplicity Is Its Great Mathematical Beauty. This Is A Quality Which Cannot Be Defined, Any More Than Beauty In Art Can Be Defined, But Which People Who Study Mathematics Usually Have No Difficulty In Appreciating.

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.

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.

Renormalization Is Just A Stop-gap Procedure. There Must Be Some Fundamental Change In Our Ideas, Probably A Change Just As Fundamental As The Passage From Bohr's Orbit Theory To Quantum Mechanics. When You Get A Number Turning Out To Be Infinite Which Ought To Be Finite, You Should Admit That There Is Something Wrong With Your Equations, And Not Hope That You Can Get A Good Theory Just By Doctoring Up That Number.