Niels Bohr Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  Science, Ideas, Tasks

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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.

  Niels Bohr

  Life, Drama, Science

  Niels Bohr (2010). “Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge”, p.63, Courier Dover Publications

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• Physics is the belief that a simple and consistent description of nature is possible.

  Niels Bohr

  Simple, Belief, Physics

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• One must always do what one really cannot.

  Niels Bohr

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• 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

  Nature, Science, Thinking

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• No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.

  Niels Bohr

  Inspirational, Life, Thinking

  Attributed to Niels Bohr in William Glen "The Mass-Extinction Debates: How Science Works in a Crisis" (p. 62), 1994.

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• Einstein, stop telling God what to do!

  Niels Bohr

  God, Quantum Mechanics

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• Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

  Niels Bohr

  Crazy, Science, Technology

  "First Philosophy: The Theory of Everything". Book by Spencer Scoular, 2007.

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• Oh what idiots we have all been, this is just as it must be

  Niels Bohr

  Spiritual, Idiot

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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

  Niels Bohr

  Essence, Tasks, Way

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• Accuracy and clarity of statement are mutually exclusive.

  Niels Bohr

  Clarity, Accuracy, Exclusive

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• The measurement we get when we measure something is not a property of the thing measured.

  Niels Bohr

  Measurement, Property

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• There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are clearly absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth

  Niels Bohr

  Spiritual, Opposites, Two

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• 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

  Learning, Thinking, Theoretical Physics

  "The philosophy of Niels Bohr" by Aage Petersen in "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists", Volume 19, No. 7 (September 1963), as quoted in Abraham Pais "The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery" (p. 24), 2000, and in Paul McEvoy "Niels Bohr: Reflections on Subject and Object" (p. 291), October 2000.

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• Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.

  Niels Bohr

  Change, Time, Children

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• Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.

  Niels Bohr

  Thinking, Addresses, Logical

  59 Copy quote

• 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

  Nature, Real, Essence

  Niels Bohr (2011). “Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature: Four Essays with an Introductory Survey”, p.18, Cambridge University Press

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• 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

  Character, Reality, Ideas

  "Philosophy of Science", Volume 37 (p. 157), 1934; later quoted in Roger Gerhard Newton "The Truth of Science: Physical Theories and Reality" (p. 176), 1997.

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• It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

  Niels Bohr

  Enough, Polite

  "The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery". Book by Abraham Pais, 2000.

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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.

  Niels Bohr

  Inspirational, Family, Truth

  29 Copy quote

• It is very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future.

  Niels Bohr

  Predictions, Difficult, Accurate

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• It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.

  Niels Bohr

  Hallmark, Negation

  "Mind from Matter: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology". Book by Max Delbruck, March 5, 1986.

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• 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

  Inspirational, Life, 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.

  Niels Bohr

  Inspirational, Creating, Poetry

  Niels Bohr's response to questions on the nature of language during his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg (Summer 1920), as quoted in "Discussions about Language", 1933, in Robert J. Pranger "Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy" (p. 11), 1972, and in Steve Giles "Theorizing Modernism: Essays in Critical Theory" (p. 28), 1993.

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• Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

  Niels Bohr

  Independent, Judgement, Development

  Niels Bohr, Leon Rosenfeld (1999). “Collected works”

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