The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
NIELS BOHREverything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
More Niels Bohr Quotes
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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
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Physics is the belief that a simple and consistent description of nature is possible.
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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.
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Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.
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If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
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If you aren’t confused by quantum mechanics, you haven’t really understood it.
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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.
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We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.
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Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.
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Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
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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.
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When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
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We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
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When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
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If you think you understand it, that only shows that you don’t know the first thing about it.
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No paradox, no progress.
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Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.
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There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
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Some things are so serious, they can only be joked about.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing exists until it is measured.
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Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
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Anyone who can contemplate quantum mechanics without getting dizzy hasn’t understood it.
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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.
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Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems .
NIELS BOHR