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.
NIELS BOHREvery sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
More Niels Bohr Quotes
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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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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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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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Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.
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An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.
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An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
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A deep truth is a truth so deep that not only is it true but it’s exact opposite is also true.
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Accuracy and clarity of statement are mutually exclusive.
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Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.
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Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems .
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Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
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Some things are so serious, they can only be joked about.
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Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.
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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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One must always do what one really cannot.
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Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
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And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn’t yet understood the first thing about it.
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The measurement we get when we measure something is not a property of the thing measured.
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If you aren’t confused by quantum mechanics, you haven’t really understood it.
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The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
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How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
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You must come to Copenhagen to work with us. We like people who can actually perform thought experiments!
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We all know your idea is crazy. The question is whether it is crazy enough.
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A person who wasn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn’t understand what had been said.
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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.
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If we couldn’t laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.
NIELS BOHR