I found the best ideas usually came, not when one was actively striving for them, but when one was in a more relaxed stateโฆ I used to take long solitary walks on Sundays, during which I tended to review the current situation in a leisurely way. Such occasions often proved fruitful, even though (or perhaps, because) the primary purpose of the walk was relaxation and not research.
Paul DiracI consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.
Paul DiracA book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.
Paul DiracRenormalization 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.
Paul Dirac