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Niels Bohr

30 quotes

“Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a 1952 conversation with Heisenberg and Pauli in Copenhagen; quoted in Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.
“We must be clear that 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 (1885–1962) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg in early summer 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, as reported in Discussions about Language (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Ind…
“Even the mathematical framework helps nothing, I would first like to understand how Nature avoids the contradictions. (1927)”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Werner Heisenberg: Die Sprache der Atome (2010) by H. Rechenberg, p. 564.
“The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Niels Bohr, "Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature" (1934)
“Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature" (1934)
“What is it that we humans depend on? 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 (1885–1962) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
“For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory regarding the limited applicability of such customary idealizations, we must in fact turn to quite other branches of science, such as psychology, or even to that kind of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on quantum theory at Celebrazione del Secondo Centenario della Nascita di Luigi Galvani, Bologna, Italy (October 1937)
“Contraria Sunt Complementa”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Motto he chose for his coat of arms, when granted the Danish Order of the Elephant in 1947.
“However far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is that simply by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Niels Bohr, "Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics," in , Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949) pp. 199-241.
“An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller's Magnificent Obsession by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE magazine (6 September 1954), p. 62
“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Said to Wolfgang Pauli after his presentation of Heisenberg's and Pauli's nonlinear field theory of elementary particles, at Columbia University (1958), as reported by F. J. Dyson in his paper "Innovation in Physics" (S…
“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 (1885–1962) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Unity of Human Knowledge" (October 1960)
“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 (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The World of the Atom (1966) by Henry Abraham Boorse and Lloyd Motz, p. 741
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Niels Bohr : The Man, His Science, & the World They Changed (1966) by Ruth Moore, p. 196
“Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by his son Hans Bohr in "My Father", published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work (1967), p. 328
“Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan L. Mackay, p. 35
“It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar‎ (1991) by Kameshwar C. Wali, p. 147
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Werner Heisenberg recounts a personal conversation he had with Pauli and Bohr in 1952 in which Bohr says, "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." Heisen…
Also quoted by: Niels Bohr (disputed)
“Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
Also quoted by: Werner Heisenberg (misattributed)
“Truth and clarity are complementary.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism : Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (2000) by Christopher Norris, p. 234
“It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Values of the Wise : Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 63
“Oh, what idiots we all have been. This is just as it must be.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In response to Frisch & Meitner's explanation of nuclear fission, as quoted in The Physicists - A generation that changed the world (1981) by C.P.Snow, p. 96
“I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in God Is Not One : The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter (2010), by Stephen Prothero, Ch, 4 : Hinduism : The Way of Devotion, p. 144
“No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Little I Remember (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95
“I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June 10, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.
“The grand discoveries which scientific experiment yielded at and about the turn of the century, in which investigators in many countries took an eminent part and which were destined all unexpectedly to give us a fresh insight into the structure of atoms, were due in the first instance, as all are aware, to the work of the great investigators of the English school, Sir Joseph Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford, who have inscribed their names on the tablets of the history of scientific research as distinguished witnesses to the truth that imagination and acumen are capable of penetrating the crowded mass of registered experience and of revealing Nature's simplicity to our gaze.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Niels Bohr's speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (December 10, 1922)
“I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I consider those developments in physics during the last decades which have shown how problematical such concepts as "objective" and "subjective" are, a great liberation of thought. The whole thing started with the theory of relativity. In the past, the statement that two events are simultaneous was considered an objective assertion, one that could be communicated quite simply and that was open to verification by any observer. Today we know that 'simultaneity' contains a subjective element, inasmuch as two events that appear simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an observer in motion. However, the relativistic description is also objective inasmuch as every observer can deduce by calculation what the other observer will perceive or has perceived. For all that, we have come a long way from the classical ideal of objective descriptions. In quantum mechanics the departure from this ideal has been even more radical. We can still use the objectifying language of classical physics to make statements about observable facts. For instance, we can say that a photographic plate has been blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. But we can say nothing about the atoms themselves. And what predictions we base on such findings depend on the way we pose our experimental question, and here the observer has freedom of choice. Naturally, it still makes no difference whether the observer is a man, an animal, or a piece of apparatus, but it is no longer possible to make predictions without reference to the observer or the means of observation. To that extent, every physical process may be said to have objective and subjective features. The objective world of nineteenth-century science was, as we know today, an ideal, limiting case, but not the whole reality. Admittedly, even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to distinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. But the location of the separation may depend on the way things are looked at; to a certain extent it can be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we cannot speak about the content of religion in an objectifying language. The fact that different religions try to express this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is no real objection. Perhaps we ought to look upon these different forms as complementary descriptions which, though they exclude one another, are needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's relationship with the central order.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In mathematics we can take our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the final analysis mathematics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we choose. Religion, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with our life and death; its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our very existence. We cannot just look at them impassively from the outside. Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot be separated from our attitude to society. Even if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a particular human society, it is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social molding force through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of knowledge. Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to speak of life and death and the human condition to other members of the society in which he's chosen to live; he must educate his children according to the norms of that society, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him attain these ends. Here, too, the relationship between critical thought about the spiritual content of a given religion and action based on the deliberate acceptance of that content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to overcome doubts and, if he has to suffer, provides him with the kind of solace that only a sense of being sheltered under an all-embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to make social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is set.”
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source