8 Niels Bohr Quotes on Physics

Niels Bohr quotes on physics

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

5. For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory regarding the limited applicability of such customary idealisations, 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.

6. 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.

7. 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 therefor objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

8. There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract 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...

14. Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

21. Stop telling God what to do with his dice.

27. I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night an 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?