Einstein Saw No Point in Exploring Non-Beautiful Theories
What I remember most clearly was that when I put down a suggestion that seemed to me cogent and reasonable, Einstein did not in the least contest this, but he only said, 'Oh, how ugly.' As soon as an equation seemed to him to be ugly, he really rather lost interest in it and could not understand why somebody else was willing to spend much time on it. He was quite convinced that beauty was a guiding principle in the search for important results in theoretical physics.
Roger Penrose, A. Zee, Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics (2007-07-30)
Notes
Quoting Sir Hermann Bondi. I would argue that an ugly theory becomes beautiful as you explore it.
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