Bohr Quotes & Sayings

Truth is:
I was always that kind of girl.
Truth is:
they don't make dresses any whiter than
mine.
Truth is:
I am not Demeter's daughter.
I am Heisenberg's ripe tomato
I am Niels Bohr's piece on the side.
In the winter I am a particle.
In the summer I am a wave.
And I didn't get to be queen of hell
by letting folks off easy. — Catherynne M Valente

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. — Niels Bohr

We [Frisch and Lise Meitner] walked up and down in the snow, I on skis and she on foot (she said and proved that she could get along just as fast that way), and gradually the idea took shape that this was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but rather a process to be explained by Bohr's idea that the nucleus was like a liquid drop; such a drop might elongate and divide itself. — Otto Robert Frisch

Which is to say that culture is not a reflex of political economy, but
that society is now a reflex of key shifts in music theory and practice ...
[Sampladelia is] the sound made by those early-twentieth-century discoveries
in particle physics and relativiity theory, the projection of the minds of
Einstein, Heisenbery, and Bohr, their fateful explorations of liquid time,
curving space, uncertainty fields and relativity theorems, into densely
configured and fully ambivalent android music tracks — Arthur Kroker

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

Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed. — A. N. Wilson

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

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself it's own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. — Niels Bohr

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. — Niels Bohr

The present state of atomic theory is characterized by the fact that we not only believe the existence of atoms to be proved beyond a doubt, but also we even believe that we have an intimate knowledge of the constituents of the individual atoms. — Niels Bohr

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. — Niels Bohr

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical. — Richard P. Feynman

After Elsa's death, Einstein established a routine that as the years passed varied less and less. Breakfast between 9 and 10 was followed by a walk to the institute. After working until 1pm he would return home for lunch and a nap. Afterwards he would work in his study until dinner between 6.30 and 7pm. If not entertaining guests, he would return to work until he went to bed between 11 and 12. He rarely went to the theatre or to a concert, and unlike Bohr, hardly ever watched a movie. He was, Einstein said in 1936, 'living in the kind of solitude that is painful in one's youth but in one's more mature years is delicious'. — Manjit Kumar

when does an electron know when to jump, and how does it decide where to jump? Reasonably enough, Rutherford wanted to know what underlying process controlled the quantum jumping: "Bohr's answer was remarkable. Bohr suggested that the whole process was fundamentally random, and could only be considered by statistical methods: every change in the state of an atom should be regarded as an individual process, incapable of more detailed description. We are here so far removed from a causal description that an atom may in general even be said to possess a free choice between various possible transitions. — Andrew Thomas

And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet understood the first thing about it. — Niels Bohr

When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it. — Niels Bohr

The founders and grand theorists of modern (quantum and relativity) physics: Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Eddington, Pauli, de Broglie, Jeans, and Planck. — Ken Wilber

Using the word much as it is used in atomic physics to characterize the relationship between experience obtained by different experimental arrangements and visualized only by mutually exclusive ideas, we may truly say that different human cultures are complimentary to each other ... each such culture represents a harmonious balance of traditional conventions by means of which latent potentialities of human life unfold themselves in a way which reveals to us new aspects of its unlimited richness and variety. — Niels Bohr

It is very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future. — Niels Bohr

Of course I don't believe in it [pointing to horseshoe on his office wall]. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not. — Niels Bohr

Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems . — Niels Bohr

The legendary Danish physicist Niels Bohr distinguished two kinds of truths. An ordinary truth is a statement whose opposite is a falsehood. A profound truth is a statement whose opposite is also a profound truth. — Frank Wilczek

Rutherford is a man you can rely on; he comes regularly and enquires how things are going and talks about the smallest details - Rutherford is such an outstanding man and really interested in the work of all the people around him. — Niels Bohr

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

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

In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, as far as possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience. — Niels Bohr

Nobody knows how the stand of our knowledge about the atom would be without him. Personally, Bohr is one of the amiable colleagues I have met. He utters his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one who believes himself to be in possession of the truth. — Albert Einstein

Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it. — Niels Bohr

We are suspended in language. — Niels Bohr

It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science. — Niels Bohr

The non-commutativity of the underlying process produces an ontological complementarity. This must be contrasted to Bohr's epistemological complementarity. — Basil Hiley

In a sense the debate between Penrose and Hawking is a continuation of that earlier argument, with Penrose playing the role of Einstein and Hawking that of Bohr. — Stephen Hawking

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions. — Niels Bohr

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth. — Niels Bohr

When [Niels] Bohr is about everything is somehow different. Even the dullest gets a fit of brilliancy. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. — Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. — Niels Bohr

Accuracy and clarity of statement are mutually exclusive. — Niels Bohr

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough. — Niels Bohr

There's a quote from the famous physicist Niels Bohr, who posits that the way you become an expert in a field is to make every mistake possible in that field. — Sebastian Gutierrez

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

If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything. — Niels Bohr

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness. — Niels Bohr

In March 1950, in New York City, I was married to Marietta Soffer. We have three children: Vilhelm, Tomas, and Margrethe. — Aage Bohr

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

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. — Niels Bohr

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet. — Niels Bohr

One thought spectra are marvellous, but it is not possible to make progress there. Just as if you have the wing of a butterfly then certainly it is very regular with the colors and so on, but nobody thought one could get the basis of biology from the coloring of the wing of a butterfly. — Niels Bohr

It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. Some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes made in passing from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. Some day a new quantum mechanics, a relativistic one, will be discovered, in which we will not have these infinities occurring at all. It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted. — Paul Dirac

[About the great synthesis of atomic physics in the 1920s]
It was a heroic time. It was not the doing of any one man; it involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands. But from the first to last the deeply creative, subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened and finally transmuted the enterprise. — J. Robert Oppenheimer

A deep truth is a truth so deep that not only is it true but it's exact opposite is also true. — Niels Bohr

But it is necessary to insist more strongly than usual that what I am putting before you is a model-the Bohr model atom-because later I shall take you to a profounder level of representation in which the electron instead of being confined to a particular locality is distributed in a sort of probability haze all over the atom. — Arthur Eddington

A person who wasn't outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn't understand what had been said. — Niels Bohr

I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments? — Werner Heisenberg

You must come to Copenhagen to work with us. We like people who can actually perform thought experiments! — Niels Bohr

It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.) — Karl Popper

Perhaps I have found out a little about the structure of atoms. — Niels Bohr

Einstein: That's nonlocal behavior.
Bohr: True
Einstein: But reality dictates that ..
Bohr: You cannot speak of reality anymore!
Einstein: But I dismiss nonlocality.
Bohr: So do I.
Bell: Sorry Bohr, there is a reality. Sorry Bohr & Einstein, it is nonlocality.
Aspect: Sorry Bell, your distributions are wrong, ALL empirical results show quantum behavior.
Philosophers: Einstein is wrong, the world is spooky indeed.
Bohr: You laymen, did you even hear what I've just uttered? — Ibrahim Ibrahim

Copenhagen interpretation Niels Bohr's combination of instrumentalism, anthropocentrism and studied ambiguity, used to avoid understanding quantum theory as being about reality. — David Deutsch

Anybody who is not shocked by this subject has failed to understand it. [of quantum mechanics] — Niels Bohr

Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world — Niels Bohr

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. — Niels Bohr

Chemistry, until my childhood, not that long ago, was regarded as a calculating device. Because you couldn't reduce to physics. So it's just some way of calculating the result of experiments. The Bohr atom was treated that way. — Noam Chomsky

Arnold Sommerfeld generalized Bohr's model to include elliptical orbits in three dimensions. He treated the problem relativistically (using Einstein's formula for the increase of mass with velocity), ... According to historian Max Jammer, this success of Sommerfeld's fine-structure formula "served also as an indirect confirmation of Einstein's relativistic formula for the velocity dependence of inertia mass. — Stephen G. Brush

It is difficult to predict, especially the future. — Niels Bohr

Chinese dialectical reasoning had an impact on the physicist Niels Bohr, who was highly knowledgeable about Eastern thought. He attributed his development of quantum theory in part to the metaphysics of the East. There had been a centuries-long debate in the West about whether light consists of particles or waves. Belief in one was assumed to contradict and render impossible belief in the other. Bohr's solution was to say that light can be thought of in both ways. In quantum theory, light can be viewed either as a particle or as a wave. Just never both at the same time. — Richard E. Nisbett

The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively. — Niels Bohr

And so, whereas Bohr and the Copenhagen gang would argue that only one of these universes would exist (because the act of measurement, which they claim lies outside of Schrodinger's purview, would collapse away all the others), and whereas a first-pass attempt to go beyond Bohr and extend Schrodinger's math to all particles, including those constituting equipment and brains, yielded dizzying confusion (because a given machine or mind seemed to internalize all possible outcomes simultaneously), Everett found that a more careful reading of Schrodinger's math leads somewhere else: to a plentiful reality populated by an ever-growing collection of universes. — Brian Greene

We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words. — Niels Bohr

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. — Sam Kean

Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them. — Niels Bohr

The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning. — Niels Bohr

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

Nothing exists until it is measured. — Niels Bohr

Stop telling God what to do with his dice. — Niels Bohr

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

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

Bohr's standpoint, that a space-time description is impossible, I reject a limine. Physics does not consist only of atomic research, science does not consist only of physics, and life does not consist only of science. The aim of atomic research is to fit our empirical knowledge concerning it into our other thinking. All of this other thinking, so far as it concerns the outer world, is active in space and time. If it cannot be fitted into space and time, then it fails in its whole aim and one does not know what purpose it really serves. — Erwin Schrodinger

There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them. — Niels Bohr

Fermi turned to Bohr with weary eyes and a slanted smile, and shrugged. "So we thought we had discovered new elements. We even named them - hesperium, ausonium. Wrong! Mythical! They were ordinary old barium and iodine. We were careful - too careful. — Gregory Benford

[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:]
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

In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time. — Niels Bohr

And even if Einstein could not be defied, he might be evaded. Those who sponsored this view talked hopefully about shortcuts through higher dimensions, lines that were straighter than straight, and hyperspacial connectivity. They were fond of using an expressive phrase coined by a Princeton mathematician of the last century: "Wormholes in space." Critics who suggested that these ideas were too fantastic to be taken seriously were reminded of Niels Bohr's "Your theory is crazy - but not crazy enough to be true." If — Arthur C. Clarke

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

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them. — Niels Bohr

If you have a correct statement, then the opposite of a correct statement is of course an incorrect statement, a wrong statement. But when you have a deep truth, then the opposite of a deep truth may again be a deep truth. — Niels Bohr

Somebody once asked Niels Bohr why he had a horseshoe hanging above the front door of his house. Surely you, a world famous physicist, can't really believe that hanging a horseshoe above your door brings you luck? Of course not, Bohr replied, but I have been reliably informed that it will bring me luck whether I believe in it or not. — Arthur Koestler

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

I have been connected with the Niels Bohr Institute since the completion of my university studies, first as a research fellow and, from 1956, as a professor of physics at the University of Copenhagen. After the death of my father in 1962, I followed him as director of the Institute until 1970. — Aage Bohr

The bridge between the electron and the other elementary particles is provided by the fine structure constant, a ~ 1/137, as manifested in the factor-of-137 spacings between the classical electron radius, electron Compton radius, and Bohr orbit radius. ... An a-quantized mass-generation grid extends accurately from the electron all the way to the top quark t, and leads to a corresponding a-quantized particle lifetime grid. — Malcolm H. Mac Gregor

Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by biological patterns as social patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by inorganic patterns. There is no direct scientific connection between mind and matter. As the atomic scientist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are suspended in language." Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived. — Robert M. Pirsig

A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance. 'Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?' he asks. 'No,' replies the colleague, 'but I've been told that it works even if you don't believe in it.' — Niels Bohr

The opposite of a plain truth, Neils Bohr liked to repeat, is a plain falsehood. But the opposite of a deep truth is another deep truth. — Rebecca Goldstein

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. — Niels Bohr

Bohr Before we can lay our hands on anything, our life's over.
Heisenberg Before we can glimpse who or what we are, we're gone and laid to dust.
Bohr Settled among all the dust we raised.
Margrethe And sooner or later there will come a time when all our children are laid to dust, and all our children's children. — Michael Frayn

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think — Niels Bohr

A. Douglas Stone, a physicist who has spent his life using quantum mechanics to explore striking new phenomena, has turned his considerable writing skills to thinking about Einstein and the quantum. What he finds and makes broadly understandable are the riches of Einstein's thinking not about relativity, not about his arguments with Bohr, but about Einstein's deep insights into the quantum world, insights that Stone shows speak to us now with all the vividness and depth they had a century ago. This is a fascinating book, lively, engaging, and strong in physical intuition. — Peter Galison

Bohr: Heisenberg, I have to say - if people are to be measured strictly in terms of observable quantities ...
Heisenberg: Then we should need a strange new quantum ethics. — Michael Frayn

Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists into thinking that the job (interpreting quantum theory) was done 50 years ago. — Murray Gell-Mann

An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation. — Niels Bohr