“The opposite of every great idea is another great idea.”

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.

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

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

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

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are clearly absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.

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

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

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

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

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

Failure is the true test of greatness

Some of the greatest moments in life come from moments that are incomplete.

Greatness is a spiritual condition.

I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today.

I think God rarely gives to one man, or one set of men, more than one great moral victory to win.