It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to the understanding of nature ... In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.
"On the Method of Theoretical Physics". Lecture at the University of Oxford (1933), as quoted in Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 63., p. 237, 1990.
