A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.

What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical…

— Paul Dirac

The mathematical facts worthy of being studied are those which, by their analogy with other facts, are capable of leading us to the knowledge…

— Henri Poincare

It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can…

— Henry John Stephen Smith

As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and…

— Blaise Pascal

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy…

— D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should…

— Paul Dirac

It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from…

— Paul Dirac

A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.

— Paul Dirac

Theoretical physicists accept the need for mathematical beauty as an act of faith... For example, the main reason why the theory of relativity is…

— Paul Dirac

It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one's culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on...But…

— Paul Dirac

I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even…

— Paul Dirac

One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to…

— Richard P. Feynman

But we must not underestimate the potency of the mathematical process of abstraction. A surprising variety of things happen to have both magnitude and…

— Banesh Hoffmann

It is going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be analyzable with…

— Richard P. Feynman

Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.

— Brian Greene