Top 80 Niels Bohr Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “If you aren’t confused by quantum mechanics, you haven’t really understood it.”

— Niels Bohr

2. “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”

— Niels Bohr

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3. “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

— Niels Bohr

4. “A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.”

— Niels Bohr

5. “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

— Niels Bohr

6. “If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.”

— Niels Bohr

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7. “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.”

— Niels Bohr

8. “No paradox, no progress.”

— Niels Bohr

9. “Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.”

— Niels Bohr

10. “In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.”

— Niels Bohr

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11. “No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.”

— Niels Bohr

12. “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

— Niels Bohr

13. “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

14. “One must always do what one really cannot.”

— Niels Bohr

15. “Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.”

— Niels Bohr

16. “Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”

— Niels Bohr

17. “If we couldn’t laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.”

— Niels Bohr

18. “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.”

— Niels Bohr

19. “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

20. “We all know your idea is crazy. The question is whether it is crazy enough.”

— Niels Bohr

21. “Physics is the belief that a simple and consistent description of nature is possible.”

— Niels Bohr

22. “There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”

— Niels Bohr

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23. “Einstein, stop telling God what to do!”

— Niels Bohr

24. “Nothing exists until it is measured.”

— Niels Bohr

25. “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”

— Niels Bohr

26. “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

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27. “The opposite of every great idea is another great idea.”

— Niels Bohr

28. “There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.”

— Niels Bohr

29. “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.”

— Niels Bohr

30. “Accuracy and clarity of statement are mutually exclusive.”

— Niels Bohr

31. “The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.”

— Niels Bohr

32. “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

33. “It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.”

— Niels Bohr

34. “A deep truth is a truth so deep that not only is it true but it’s exact opposite is also true.”

— Niels Bohr

35. “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.”

— Niels Bohr

36. “The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.”

— Niels Bohr

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37. “Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.”

— Niels Bohr

38. “Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.”

— Niels Bohr

39. “Truth and clarity are complementary.”

— Niels Bohr

40. “We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.”

— Niels Bohr

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

— Niels Bohr

42. “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

43. “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

44. “A person who wasn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn’t understand what had been said.”

— Niels Bohr

45. “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”

— Niels Bohr

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46. “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.”

— Niels Bohr

47. “Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.”

— Niels Bohr

48. “Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.”

— Niels Bohr

49. “If you think you understand it, that only shows that you don’t know the first thing about it.”

— Niels Bohr

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50. “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