Werner Heisenberg Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Perception, Quantum Physics

  Physics and Philosophy (1958)

  157 Copy quote

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Littles, Know How, Knows

  146 Copy quote

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Reality, Thinking

  145 Copy quote

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Looks, One Thing

  115 Copy quote

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Reality

  93 Copy quote

• Looking at something changes it.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Things Change

  90 Copy quote

• "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

  117 Copy quote

• 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

  Time, Philosophy, Crazy

  "Pride of India". Book by Samskrita Bharati, 2006.

  140 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Two, Answers

  167 Copy quote

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Path, Existence

  72 Copy quote

• [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

  Real, Atoms, World

  121 Copy quote

• 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

  Mistake, People, Experts

  99 Copy quote

• It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Spiritual, Truth, Lying

  "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science". Book by Werner Heisenberg, 1958.

  28 Copy quote

• The very act of observing disturbs the system.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Observing

  23 Copy quote

• There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Religion, Atheism, Serious

  52 Copy quote

• Unless you stake your life, life will not be won.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Stakes

  1969 Der Teil und das Ganze, translated by A J Pomerans as Physics and Beyond (1971).

  42 Copy quote

• 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, Thinking, Ideas

  Werner Heisenberg (1970). “Natural law and the structure of matter”

  71 Copy quote

• The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Mind, Responsible, Structure

  Werner Heisenberg (1971). “Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations”

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Mistake, Reality, Errors

  "Physics from Wholeness : Dynamical Totality as a Conceptual Foundation for Physical Theories". Book by Barbara Piechocinska, 2005.

  53 Copy quote

• The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Reality, Infinite, Understood

  "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science". Book by Werner Heisenberg, 1958.

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Suffering, Despair

  Werner Heisenberg (1990). “Across the frontiers”, Ox Bow Pr

  98 Copy quote

• By getting to smaller and smaller units, we do not come to fundamental or indivisible units. But we do come to a point where further division has no meaning.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Division, Fundamentals

  29 Copy quote

• Science clears the fields on which technology can build.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Technology, Fields

  35 Copy quote

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

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Separation, Observation

  Werner Heisenberg (1990). “Across the frontiers”, Ox Bow Pr

  39 Copy quote

• 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

  Religious, Real, Thinking

  66 Copy quote

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