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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

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Physics Is To Be

Niels Bohr

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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.

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A Person Who Wasn't Outraged On First Hearing About Quantum Theory Didn't Understand What Had Been Said.

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All Rising Curves That Show Unwelcome Trends In Human Affairs Will Approach Infinity If Extended Far Enough, But It Is We Who Dictate The Curve And Not Vice Versa.

Truth Is Something That We Can Attempt To Doubt, And Then Perhaps, After Much Exertion, Discover That Part Of The Doubt Is Not Justified.

One Must Always Do What One Really Cannot.

We All Know Your Idea Is Crazy. The Question Is Whether It Is Crazy Enough.

Opposites Are Not Contradictory But Complementary.

Accuracy And Clarity Of Statement Are Mutually Exclusive.

Physics Is The Belief That A Simple And Consistent Description Of Nature Is Possible.

It Is Very Difficult To Make An Accurate Prediction, Especially About The Future.

Prediction Is Difficult, Especially The Future.

The Great Extension Of Our Experience In Recent Years Has Brought Light To The Insufficiency Of Our Simple Mechanical Conceptions And, As A Consequence, Has Shaken The Foundation On Which The Customary Interpretation Of Observation Was Based.

Never Express Yourself More Clearly Than You Are Able To Think.

Nothing Exists Until It Is Measured.

In Our Description Of Nature The Purpose Is Not To Disclose The Real Essence Of The Phenomena But Only To Track Down, So Far As It Is Possible, Relations Between The Manifold Aspects Of Our Experience.

We Are Trapped By Language To Such A Degree That Every Attempt To Formulate Insight Is A Play On Words.

I Go Into The Upanishads To Ask Questions.

The Measurement We Get When We Measure Something Is Not A Property Of The Thing Measured.

No Paradox, No Progress.

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.

You Must Come To Copenhagen To Work With Us. We Like People Who Can Actually Perform Thought Experiments!

It Is Wrong To Think That The Task Of Physics Is To Find Out How Nature Is. Physics Concerns What We Say About Nature.

Theoretical Physics

Every Great And Deep Difficulty Bears In Itself Its Own Solution. It Forces Us To Change Our Thinking In Order To Find It.

It Is A Great Pity That Human Beings Cannot Find All Of Their Satisfaction In Scientific Contemplativeness.

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Our Task Is Not To Penetrate The Essence Of Things, The Meaning Of Which We Do Not Know Anyway, But Rather To Develop Concepts Which Allow Us To Talk In A Productive Way About Phenomena In Nature

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If An Idea Does Not Appear Bizarre, There Is No Hope For It.

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Address To Albert Einstein: You Are Not Thinking. You Are Merely Being Logical.

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Everything We Call Real Is Made Of Things That Cannot Be Regarded As Real.

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Anyone Who Can Contemplate Quantum Mechanics Without Getting Dizzy Hasn't Understood It.

There Is No Hope For Any Speculation That Does Not Look Absurd At First Glance.

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If Anybody Says He Can Think About Quantum Physics Without Getting Giddy, That Only Shows He Has Not Understood The First Thing About Them.

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There Are Some Things So Serious You Have To Laugh At Them.

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