“Whoever dedicates his life to searching out particular connections of nature will spontaneously be confronted with the question how they harmoniously fit into the whole.”

Although the theory of relativity makes the greatest of demands on the ability for abstract thought, still it fulfills the traditional requirements of science insofar as it permits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) and, hence, a clear formulation of the law of causality.

I would like to mention astrophysics; in this field, the strange properties of the pulsars and quasars, and perhaps also the gravitational waves, can be considered as a challenge.

I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo-Saxons such tremendous power that Europe will become a bloc under Anglo-Saxon domination. If that is the case, it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether Stalin will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past.

Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.

Sometimes a poor performance is better for enjoyment, because you can look at those things that were wrong and analyze them.

The end of the First World War had thrown Germany’s youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.

If the lecture is good, then everything is too smooth. That’s the same in music: if the performance is too good, you really don’t enjoy it, because it just goes by, and you can never penetrate into the heart of it.

If we made atomic bombs, we would bring about a terrible change in the world. Who knows what would happen from this?

If this were the whole truth, we should, when entering into a new field, introduce only such quantities as can directly be observed, and formulate natural laws only by means of these quantities.

It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data.

Reports in Washington show that our reasoning was just like that of your physicists.

In America, it was decided to attempt the production of atomic bombs with an effort that would constitute a large part of the collective American war effort.

The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form – the one of the particles, the other of the waves – are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.

I think that if a United States of Europe were to be formed, it would be in our interests to fight for it, as all our old traditions would remain in such a united Europe, whereas if we were to start now as part of the Russian Empire, everything that had ever been in Germany would disappear.

Bohr’s influence on the physics and the physicists of our century was stronger than that of anyone else, even than that of Albert Einstein.

If you build a 50-foot wall, you’ll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder.

Confronting some stern and faceless judge who would condemn me to a pit of hell if I didn’t achieve the “zone,” if even for a moment. Not a particularly happy place to work from.

Dr. King’s general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.

But I can’t confront the doubts I have. I can’t admit that maybe the past was bad, and so, for the sake of momentum I’m condemning the future to death so it can match the past.

Truthfully, the only real and consistent disability I’ve had to confront is the world ever thinking that I could be described by those definitions.

Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task.

The only solution is to confront them – confront yourself – with the greatest fear imaginable.

He dares confront the time, And speak the truth, and give the world no rest No kingly threat can cowardize his breath, He with majestic step goes forth to meet his death.