It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness. Niels Bohr More Quotes by Niels Bohr More Quotes From Niels Bohr 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. Niels Bohr familytruthinspirational When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. Niels Bohr atomslanguagescience We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words. Niels Bohr degreesstatisticsplay Physics is the belief that a simple and consistent description of nature is possible. Niels Bohr physicsbeliefsimple If an idea does not appear bizarre, there is no hope for it. Niels Bohr creativityworkideas The measurement we get when we measure something is not a property of the thing measured. Niels Bohr propertymeasurement The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth. Niels Bohr truthoppositesscience When asked ... [about] an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, 'There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.' Niels Bohr naturesciencethinking 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. Niels Bohr naturerealessence Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. Niels Bohr inspirationalsciencethinking How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. Niels Bohr progressphysicsthinking 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. Niels Bohr prejudicedevelopmentcommon 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. Niels Bohr radicalrebelspiritual Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head. Niels Bohr changetimechildren It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we say about nature. Niels Bohr theoretical-physicslearningthinking The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively. Niels Bohr causalityunionsspace If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them. Niels Bohr inspirationallifescience The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning. Niels Bohr life-has-no-meaningmeaning-of-lifefacts 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. Niels Bohr tasksscienceideas We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. Niels Bohr characterrealityideas
