144 Quotes by Niels Bohr

Anyone who can contemplate quantum mechanics without getting dizzy hasn't understood it.

It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

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

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.'

Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.

Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.

In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things-we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.

Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it.

Truth and clarity are complementary