Niels Bohr Quotes

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

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

Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.

Nothing exists until it is measured.

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

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

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

When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.

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

A deep truth is a truth so deep that not only is it true but it's exact opposite is also true.

If you think you understand it, that only shows that you don't know the first thing about it.

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.'

No paradox, no progress.

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

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

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

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

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.

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

We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.

What is that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.

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