This proving of such and such I found to be almost like cheating. You start somewhere, and then you go into a dark tunnel, and then you come out at another place. You find that you have proved what you wanted to prove, but in the tunnel, you don't see anything.

Werner Heisenberg

Only a few know, how much one must know to know how little one knows.

Werner Heisenberg

know-how knows littles

When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity ? And why turbulence ? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.

Werner Heisenberg

answers two believe

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg

quantum-physics perception science

Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.

Werner Heisenberg

science reality thinking

After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.

Werner Heisenberg

crazy time philosophy

The more closely you look at one thing, the less closely can you see something else.

Werner Heisenberg

one-thing looks

[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.

Werner Heisenberg

atoms real world

The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.

Werner Heisenberg

reality

Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.

Werner Heisenberg

despair suffering lying

"Uncertainty" is NOT "I don't know." It is "I can't know." "I am uncertain" does not mean "I could be certain."

Werner Heisenberg

mean-girls arrogance doe

The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.

Werner Heisenberg

existence path

It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human nature, in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.

Werner Heisenberg

real religious thinking

Looking at something changes it.

Werner Heisenberg

things-change

Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them.

Werner Heisenberg

experts mistake people

There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.

Werner Heisenberg

errors mistake reality

I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.

Werner Heisenberg

plato ideas thinking

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.

Werner Heisenberg

failure mistake math

The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.

Werner Heisenberg

measurement momentum vices

...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.

Werner Heisenberg

observation separation science

You may object that by speaking of simplicity and beauty I am introducing aesthetic criteria of truth, and I frankly admit that I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of mathematical schemes which nature presents us. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationship, which nature suddenly spreads out before us.

Werner Heisenberg

nature truth science