What Ae the Changges That I Would Ever Sit Conferable Again

The great extension of our experience in contempo years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, equally a event, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

Niels Henrik David Bohr (seven October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922 for his contributions which were essential to modern understandings of atomic structure and quantum mechanics.

Quotes [edit]

The give-and-take "reality" is likewise a give-and-take, a discussion which we must larn to use correctly.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides the states is whether information technology is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.

Physics is to be regarded not so much every bit the study of something a priori given, but rather equally the development of methods of ordering and surveying man experience.

It is incorrect to remember that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature...

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

Some subjects are and so serious that one tin can only joke well-nigh them.

• Those who are not shocked when they kickoff come across quantum theory cannot maybe have understood it.
  • In a 1952 chat 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 equally in verse. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts every bit with creating images and establishing mental connections.
  • In his first coming together with Werner Heisenberg in early on summertime 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, as reported in Discussions about Linguistic communication (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) past Robert J. Pranger, p. eleven, and Theorizing Modernism : Essays in Disquisitional Theory (1993) by Steve Giles, p. 28

• The grand discoveries which scientific experiment yielded at and most the plough of the century, in which investigators in many countries took an eminent office and which were destined all unexpectedly to give us a fresh insight into the structure of atoms, were due in the first instance, equally all are aware, to the piece of work of the bang-up investigators of the English schoolhouse, Sir Joseph Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford, who have inscribed their names on the tablets of the history of scientific research equally distinguished witnesses to the truth that imagination and apprehending are capable of penetrating the crowded mass of registered experience and of revealing Nature's simplicity to our gaze.
  • Niels Bohr'south speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (December ten, 1922)

• The neat extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, every bit a outcome, has shaken the foundation on which the customary estimation of observation was based.
  • Niels Bohr, "Diminutive Physics and the Description of Nature" (1934)

• Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and appreciable but through their interaction with other systems.
  • "Atomic Physics and the Clarification of Nature" (1934)

• What is information technology that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate feel and ideas to others. Nosotros must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our letters practise not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous graphic symbol ... Nosotros are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is upwards and what is down. The word "reality" is also a discussion, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
  • 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 similar Buddha and Lao Tzu accept been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence.
  • Speech on quantum theory at Celebrazione del Secondo Centenario della Nascita di Luigi Galvani, Bologna, Italy (October 1937)

• Contraria Sunt Complementa
  • Opposites are complementary.
    • Motto he chose for his coat of artillery, 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 prove must be expressed in classical terms. The statement is that merely by the give-and-take "experiment" we refer to a situation where nosotros tin tell others what we take 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 linguistic communication with suitable awarding of the terminology of classical physics.
  • Niels Bohr, "Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Issues in Atomic Physics," in Paul Arthur Schilpp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949) pp. 199-241.

• An expert is a person who has found out by his ain painful feel all the mistakes that i can make in a very narrow field.
  • Equally quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller's Magnificent Obsession by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE mag (half-dozen September 1954), p. 62
  • Variant: An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can exist made in a very narrow field.
    • As quoted past Edward Teller (10 Oct 1972), and A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan L. Mackay, p. 35

• Nosotros are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides the states is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being right.
  • Said to Wolfgang Pauli after his presentation of Heisenberg'due south 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" (Scientific American, 199, No. three, September 1958, pp. 74-82; reprinted in "JingShin Theoretical Physics Symposium in Honor of Professor Ta-You lot Wu," edited by Jong-Ping Hsu & Leonardo Hsu, Singapore; River Border, NJ: World Scientific, 1998, pp. 73-ninety, here: p. 84).
  • Your theory is crazy, but information technology'due south not crazy enough to be true.
    • As quoted in First Philosophy: The Theory of Everything (2007) by Spencer Scoular, p. 89
  • At that place are many slight variants on this remark:
    • Nosotros are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides u.s. is whether it is crazy enough.
    • We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question is whether it is crazy enough to be have a take chances of being correct.
    • We in the back are convinced your theory is crazy. But what divides the states is whether information technology is crazy plenty.
    • Your theory is crazy, the question is whether it's crazy enough to be true.
    • Yes, I retrieve that your theory is crazy. Sadly, it'due south not crazy enough to exist believed.

• Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, only rather every bit the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to business relationship for such experience in a manner contained of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it tin can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.
  • "The Unity of Human Cognition" (Oct 1960)

• Every valuable human being being must be a radical and a insubordinate, for what he must aim at is to brand things better than they are.
  • As quoted in The Earth of the Atom (1966) by Henry Abraham Boorse and Lloyd Motz, p. 741

• How wonderful that nosotros accept met with a paradox. Now nosotros have some promise of making progress.
  • As quoted in Niels Bohr : The Man, His Science, & the World They Changed (1966) past Ruth Moore, p. 196

• Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is likewise a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.
  • As quoted by his son Hans Bohr in "My Father", published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work (1967), p. 328
  • Unsourced variant: The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the contrary of a profound truth may well exist another profound truth.
  • Every bit quoted in Max Delbrück, Heed from Thing: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology, (1986) p. 167. It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth

• Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
  • Equally quoted in A Lexicon of Scientific Quotations (1991) past Alan 50. Mackay, p. 35

• It is a peachy pity that man beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.
  • Equally quoted in Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar‎ (1991) by Kameshwar C. Wali, p. 147

• Anyone who is not shocked past quantum theory has not understood it.
  • Equally quoted in Coming together the Universe Halfway (2007) by Karen Michelle Barad, p. 254, with a footnote citing The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr (1998).
  • Variants: Those who are not shocked when they first come up across breakthrough mechanics cannot perchance have understood information technology.
    Those who are non shocked when they beginning come up across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood information technology.
    Anyone who is non shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.
    If you think you tin can talk almost quantum theory without feeling dizzy, you haven't understood the kickoff thing about it.

• Some subjects are and so serious that one tin can merely joke nigh them.
  • Equally quoted in The Genius of Scientific discipline: A Portrait Gallery (2000) past Abraham Pais, p. 24
  • Some things are so serious that one tin can only joke about them.
    • Variant without any citation as to writer in Denial is not a river in Egypt (1998) by Sandi Bachom, p. 85.

• Truth and clarity are complementary.
  • As quoted in Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism : Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (2000) past Christopher Norris, p. 234

• It is non enough to be incorrect, one must likewise exist polite.
  • Equally quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24

• Never express yourself more conspicuously than you are able to remember.
  • As quoted in Values of the Wise : Humanity'due south Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 63

• Oh, what idiots we all have been. This is just every bit information technology must be.
  • In response to Frisch & Meitner'due south caption of nuclear fission, as quoted in The Physicists - A generation that inverse the earth (1981) by C.P.Snow, p. 96

• I become into the Upanishads to ask questions.
  • As quoted in God Is Not One : The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Affair (2010), by Stephen Prothero, Ch, 4 : Hinduism : The Way of Devotion, p. 144

• No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical.
  • In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Piffling I Recall (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95

• I am admittedly prepared to talk nigh the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that information technology is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the car really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though information technology did, is of course admittedly meaningingless.
  • Equally quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June ten, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.

[edit]

The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means but 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.

Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and deportment quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries betwixt the various cultures and societies are first to go more than fluid. Only even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he volition even so be swayed past the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously.

Statements of Bohr after the Solvay Conference of 1927, as quoted in Physics and Beyond (1971) by Werner Heisenberg

• I experience very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is strange to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses linguistic communication in quite a dissimilar way from science. The linguistic communication of faith 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 data most objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed bargain with objective truths, information technology ought to adopt the same criteria of truth every bit science. But I myself find the sectionalization of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too capricious. The fact that religions through the ages accept spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means only that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that information technology is not a 18-carat reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.

• I consider those developments in physics during the last decades which have shown how problematical such concepts as "objective" and "subjective" are, a corking liberation of idea. The whole thing started with the theory of relativity. In the past, the statement that ii events are simultaneous was considered an objective exclamation, one that could be communicated quite just and that was open up to verification past any observer. Today nosotros know that 'simultaneity' contains a subjective chemical element, inasmuch as two events that appear simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an observer in motion. Nevertheless, the relativistic clarification 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 platonic has been even more radical. We tin however use the objectifying linguistic communication of classical physics to make statements almost observable facts. For example, nosotros can say that a photographic plate has been blackened, or that cloud aerosol take formed. But nosotros can say null about the atoms themselves. And what predictions nosotros base of operations 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 concrete process may exist said to take objective and subjective features. The objective world of nineteenth-century science was, as nosotros know today, an platonic, limiting example, but non the whole reality. Admittedly, even in our future encounters with reality nosotros shall have to distinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a sectionalisation between the two. Only the location of the separation may depend on the mode things are looked at; to a certain extent information technology can be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we cannot speak almost the content of religion in an objectifying language. The fact that different religions effort to express this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is no real objection. Perhaps nosotros ought to await upon these dissimilar forms as complementary descriptions which, though they exclude one some other, are needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's relationship with the central club.

• In mathematics we can have 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 cull. Faith, on the other mitt, deals with ourselves, with our life and expiry; its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our very beingness. Nosotros 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 organized religion arose equally the spiritual structure of a item human society, it is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social molding force through history, or whether club, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and adapts them to its detail level of cognition. Present, the individual seems to be able to cull 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 go more fluid. But fifty-fifty when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible caste of independence, he volition 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 status to other members of the gild in which he's called to alive; he must educate his children according to the norms of that lodge, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot peradventure help him attain these ends. Hither, too, the relationship betwixt 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 merely a sense of being sheltered nether an all-embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to make social life more harmonious; its most of import task is to remind us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is set.

Disputed [edit]

Stop telling God what to do with his die.

• Anyone who is not shocked past breakthrough theory has non understood it.
  • Heisenberg recounts a personal conversation he had with Pauli and Bohr in 1952 in which Bohr says, "Those who are non shocked when they first come beyond quantum theory cannot possibly have understood information technology." Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.
  • Bohr said this sentence in a chat with Werner Heisenberg, as quoted in: "Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik" . R. Piper & Co., München, 1969, South. 280. Die ZEIT 22. Aug. 1969 [1].
  • As quoted in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) past Karen Michelle Barad, p. 254, with the quote attributed to The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, but with no page number or volume number given.

  • David Mermin, on pages 186–187 of his book Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age (1990) noted that he specifically looked for pithy quotes about quantum mechanics along these lines when reviewing the 3 volumes of The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, just couldn't observe any:

    Once I tried to teach some breakthrough mechanics to a class of police force students, philosophers, and fine art historians. As an advertisement for the course I put together the most sensational quotations I could collect from the most administrative practitioners of the subject. Heisenberg was a goldmine: "The concept of the objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated..."; "the thought of an objective real globe whose smallest parts exist considerately in the same sense every bit stones or copse exist, independently of whether or not we find them ... is impossible ..." Feynman did his office too: "I remember I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." But I failed to turn up annihilation comparable in the writings of Bohr. Others attributed spectacular remarks to him, but he seemed to have pains to avert whatever hint of the dramatic in his own writings. You don't pack them into your classroom with "The indivisibility of quantum phenomena finds its consequent expression in the circumstance that every definable subdivision would require a change of the experimental arrangement with the advent of new individual phenomena," or "the wider frame of complementarity directly expresses our position as regards the business relationship of key properties of matter presupposed in classical concrete description but outside its scope."

    I was therefore on the lookout for nuggets when I sat downward to review these three volumes – a reissue of Bohr's collected essays on the revolutionary epistemological character of the breakthrough theory and on the implications of that revolution for other scientific and non-scientific areas of endeavor (the originals first appeared in 1934, 1958, and 1963.) But the most radical argument I could find in all iii books was this: "...physics is to be regarded non and so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods for ordering and surveying homo experience." No nuggets for the nonscientist.

  • Variants: Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot maybe accept understood it.
    Those who are non shocked when they first come beyond quantum theory cannot perhaps have understood it.
    Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a unmarried word.
    If you think you tin can talk about quantum theory without feeling airheaded, y'all oasis't understood the first thing almost it.

• Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
  • As quoted in Teaching and Learning Elementary Social Studies (1970) by Arthur K. Ellis, p. 431
  • The above quote is also attributed to various humourists and the Danish poet Piet Hein: "det er svært at spå – især om fremtiden"
  • Information technology is also attributed to Danish cartoonist Storm P (Robert Tempest Petersen).
  • Variant: It's difficult to brand predictions, peculiarly about the future.

• Terminate telling God what to do with his dice.
  • A response to Einstein's assertion that "God doesn't play dice"; a like statement is attributed to Enrico Fermi
  • Variant: Einstein, don't tell God what to practise.
  • Variant: Don't tell God what to do with his die.
  • Variant: Yous ought not to speak for what Providence tin or tin can not practise. – Every bit described in The Physicists: A generation that changed the world (1981) by C. P. Snow, p. 84

• Of class not ... simply I am told information technology works fifty-fifty if you don't believe in it.
  • Reply to a company to his home in Tisvilde who asked him if he actually believed a horseshoe above his door brought him luck, as quoted in Inward Bound : Of Matter and Forces in the Concrete Earth (1986) by Abraham Pais, p. 210
  • In nearly published accounts of this anecdote such was Bohr's respond to his friend, simply in one early account, in The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy (1974) by Samuel Sambursky, p. 357, Bohr was at a friend's house and asked "Do yous really believe in this?" to which his friend replied "Oh, I don't believe in it. Just I am told it works even if yous don't believe in it."
  • Variant: No, but I'1000 told it works fifty-fifty if you lot don't believe in it.

Quotes about Bohr [edit]

Alphabetized past author

• Bohr seemed to remember that he had solved this question. I could not observe his solution in his writings. But at that place was no doubt that he was convinced that he had solved the trouble and, in then doing, had not only contributed to atomic physics, simply to epistemology, to philosophy, to humanity in general. And at that place are amazing passages in his writings in which he is sort of patronizing to the ancient Far Eastern philosophers, almost maxim that he had solved the problems that had defeated them. It'due south an boggling thing for me—the graphic symbol of Bohr—absolutely puzzling. I similar to speak of 2 Bohrs: one is a very pragmatic beau who insists that the apparatus is classical, and the other is a very arrogant, pontificating homo who makes enormous claims for what he has done.
  • John S. Bell, quoted in Jeremy Bernstein, Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bong: Quantum Engineer

• Ane of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the 2 sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is likewise a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are manifestly absurd.
  • Hans Henrik Bohr, writing about his father in "My father" in Niels Bohr - His Life and Piece of work As Seen By His Friends and Colleagues (1967), S. Rozental, ed.

• If quantum theory has any philosophical importance at all, information technology lies in the fact that it demonstrates for a unmarried, sharply defined science the necessity of dual aspects and complementary considerations. Niels Bohr has discussed this question with respect to many applications in physiology, psychology, and philosophy in general.
  • Max Born in Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (1949) ch. ten, p. 127

• Not oftentimes in life has a human being being caused me such joy by his mere presence as you lot did.
  • Albert Einstein in a letter to Bohr (1920)

• It is practically impossible to describe Niels Bohr to a person who has never worked with him. Probably his virtually characteristic holding was the slowness of his thinking and comprehension. When, in the tardily twenties and early thirties, the author of this book was one of the "Bohr boys" working in his Establish in Copenhagen on a Carlsberg (the all-time beer in the globe!) fellowship, he had many a risk to observe it. In the evening, when a handful of Bohr's students were "working" in the Paa Blegdamsvejen Institute, discussing the latest problems of the breakthrough theory, or playing Ping-pong on the library table with coffee cups placed on it to make the game more than difficult, Bohr would appear, complaining that he was very tired, and would like to "practise something." To "do something" inevitably meant to get to the movies, and the simply movies Bohr liked were those called The Gun Fight at the Lazy Gee Ranch or The Lone Ranger and a Sioux Girl. But it was hard to go with Bohr to the movies. He could not follow the plot, and was constantly asking us, to the great annoyance of the balance of the audience, questions like this: "Is that the sister of that cowboy who shot the Indian who tried to steal a herd of cattle belonging to her blood brother-in-constabulary?" The same slowness of reaction was apparent at scientific meetings. Many a time, a visiting immature physicist (most physicists visiting Copenhagen were immature) would evangelize a brilliant talk virtually his recent calculations on some intricate problem of the breakthrough theory. Everybody in the audience would understand the argument quite clearly, but Bohr wouldn't. So everybody would beginning to explain to Bohr the uncomplicated point he had missed, and in the resulting turmoil everybody would stop understanding anything. Finally, after a considerable menses of fourth dimension, Bohr would begin to understand, and it would plow out that what he understood about the problem presented by the visitor was quite different from what the visitor meant, and was correct, while the visitor's estimation was wrong.
  • George Gamow on Niels Bohr in "The Nifty Physicists from Galileo to Einstein" (1961) pg. 237

• I call back discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very belatedly at night and concluded almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went solitary for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and over again the question: Tin can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to u.s. in these diminutive experiments?
  • Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy (1958)

• The beginning matter Bohr said to me was that it would but then be profitable to piece of work with him if I understood that he was a dilettante. The only way I knew to react to this unexpected statement was with a polite smile of atheism. Simply manifestly Bohr was serious. He explained how he had to approach every new question from a starting bespeak of total ignorance. Information technology is perhaps ameliorate to say that Bohr's strength lay in his formidable intuition and insight rather than erudition.
  • Abraham Pais, in testimony in Niels Bohr : His Life and Work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues (1967) edited past Stefan Rozental, p. 218; later in his own work, Niels Bohr's Times : In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity (1991)

• When asked whether the algorism of quantum mechanics could be considered as somehow mirroring an underlying breakthrough world, Bohr would reply, "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum concrete description. It is wrong to call back that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what nosotros tin say nigh nature." Bohr felt that every step in the evolution of physics has strengthened the view that the problem of establishing an unambiguous description of nature has simply one solution. He regarded all attempts to replace our uncomplicated concepts or to introduce a new logic to account for the peculiarities of quantum phenomena equally not but unnecessary but too incompatible with our most fundamental conditions, since nosotros are suspended in a unique language.
  • Aage Petersen, "The philosophy of Niels Bohr" by in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 19, No. 7 (September 1963); The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) past Abraham Pais, p. 24, and Niels Bohr: Reflections on Subject field and Object (2001) by Paul. McEvoy, p. 291
  • Quotes about quote:
    • To my corking pleasure, Victor Weisskopf was sitting in his usual place in the forepart row, smiling approvingly upwards at me. (It's surprising how much such encouragement from such a source can improve the quality of a talk.) His smiles continued right upwardly to the moment when I read the Petersen quotation. No sooner had I finished reading it than Viki was on his feet. "That's outrageous," he proclaimed. "Bohr couldn't possibly take said anything similar that!" Somewhat taken aback past this sudden flip from approbation to condemnation, I feebly protested that I wasn't attributing it to Bohr, merely to Aage Petersen'south memory of Bohr. That did non extinguish the flames. "Shame on Aage Petersen," declared Viki, "for putting those ridiculous words into Bohr's oral cavity!"
      • N. David Mermin, "What'southward Wrong With This Quantum Globe?" Physics Today Vol. 52, No. two (Feb 2004), p. 10.

• [Bohr was] a marvelous physicist, one of the greatest of all time, only he was a miserable philosopher, and one couldn't talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically only i or two words to you and and so at once cutting in.
  • Karl Popper, quoted in John Horgan, The End of Science (1996), Ch. 2 : The Stop of Philosophy

• "You can talk about people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, only the matter that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr," Dr. Wheeler said.
  • John A. Wheeler as quoted past Dennis Overbye in "John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term 'Black Hole,' Is Dead at 96". NY Times. (14 April 2008)

• Niels Bohr distinguished two kinds of truths. An ordinary truth is a statement whose opposite is a falsehood. A profound truth is a argument whose opposite is also a profound truth.
  • Frank Wilczek, The Lightness of Being (2008)

External links [edit]

• Niels Bohr Archive
• Nobel Foundation: Niels Bohr
• Near Niels Bohr
• Niels Bohr Quotes Video

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Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

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