Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle Quotes & Sayings

Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Error: we can be wrong, or we can know it, but we can't do both at the same time. — Kathryn Schulz

Theorists of journalism have long noted parallels to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in physics: by reporting on something, one subtly but irrevocably changes it. — Ben Yagoda

Physicists often quote from T. H. White's epic novel The Once and Future King , where a society of ants declares, 'Everything not forbidden is compulsory.' In other words, if there isn't a basic principle of physics forbidding time travel, then time travel is necessarily a physical possibility. (The reason for this is the uncertainty principle. Unless something is forbidden, quantum effects and fluctuations will eventually make it possible if we wait long enough. Thus, unless there is a law forbidding it, it will eventually occur.) — Michio Kaku

The uncertainty principle "protects" quantum mechanics. Heisenberg recognized that if it were possible to measure the momentum and the position simultaneously with a greater accuracy, the quantum mechanics would collapse. So he proposed that it must be impossible. — Richard Feynman

The uncertainty principle refers to the degree of indeterminateness in the possible present knowledge of the simultaneous values of various quantities with which the quantum theory deals; it does not restrict, for example, the exactness of a position measurement alone or a velocity measurement alone. — Werner Heisenberg

Second, we resist love because it jams the rational mindset. The mortal mind cannot understand how miracles work, and for our entire lives we are taught to mistrust what cannot be rationally explained. Yet the fact that we cannot understand how miracles work does not mean that miracles don't happen. And while Western science argued for ages that the state of our inner being has little effect on the state of our world, even science today argues otherwise. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle reveals that as our perception of an object changes, the object itself will change. — Marianne Williamson

Okay, Polly," her grandfather said. "Let's have some normal, ordinary lesson time. What is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? — Madeleine L'Engle

Thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely. — Werner Heisenberg

Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. — Edward Witten

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which boils down in popular discourse to saying that the very act of observing things changes the things you observe, works just as well, worryingly, when you look in the mirror. — N. T. Wright