Best 75 quotes of Niels Bohr on MyQuotes

Accuracy and clarity of statement are mutually exclusive.

Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.

All rising curves that show unwelcome trends in human affairs will approach infinity if extended far enough, but it is we who dictate the curve and not vice versa.

And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet understood the first thing about it.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.

An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.

Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it.

Anyone who can contemplate quantum mechanics without getting dizzy hasn't understood it.

A person who wasn't outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn't understand what had been said.

A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.

A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance. 'Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?' he asks. 'No,' replies the colleague, 'but I've been told that it works even if you don't believe in it.'

A visitor to Niels Bohr's country cottage, noticing a horseshoe hanging on the wall, teasing the eminent scientist about this ancient superstition. "Can it be true that you, of all people, believe it will bring you luck?' 'Of course not,' replied Bohr, 'but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe it or not.'

Einstein, stop telling God what to do!

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.

If an idea does not appear bizarre, there is no hope for it.

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.

If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.

If you aren't confused by quantum mechanics, you haven't really understood it.

If you have a correct statement, then the opposite of a correct statement is of course an incorrect statement, a wrong statement. But when you have a deep truth, then the opposite of a deep truth may again be a deep truth.

In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.

In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things-we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.

In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.

Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems .

It is difficult to predict, especially the future.

It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science.

It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.

It is very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future.

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we say about nature.

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.

Of course I don't believe in it [pointing to horseshoe on his office wall]. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.

Oh what idiots we have all been, this is just as it must be

One thought spectra are marvellous, but it is not possible to make progress there. Just as if you have the wing of a butterfly then certainly it is very regular with the colors and so on, but nobody thought one could get the basis of biology from the coloring of the wing of a butterfly.

Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.

Our task is not to penetrate the essence of things, the meaning of which we do not know anyway, but rather to develop concepts which allow us to talk in a productive way about phenomena in nature

Physics is the belief that a simple and consistent description of nature is possible.

Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

Rutherford is a man you can rely on; he comes regularly and enquires how things are going and talks about the smallest details - Rutherford is such an outstanding man and really interested in the work of all the people around him.

Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.

Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue. Anthropological Commentary The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.

The measurement we get when we measure something is not a property of the thing measured.

The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called 'deep truths', are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

The opposite of every great idea is another great idea.