Skip to content
Niels Bohr
Quotes by Niels Bohr
Quotes by Niels Bohr
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
Niels Bohr
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.”
Niels Bohr
“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”
Niels Bohr
“If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.”
Niels Bohr
“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
“The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.”
Niels Bohr
“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
“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
“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.”
Niels Bohr
“Einstein, stop telling God what to do!”
Niels Bohr
“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”
Niels Bohr
“The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.”
Niels Bohr
“Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.”
Niels Bohr
“There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.”
Niels Bohr
“Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue. Anthropological Commentary The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true.”
Niels Bohr
“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.”
Niels Bohr
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
Niels Bohr
“Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.”
Niels Bohr
“A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.”
Niels Bohr
“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
“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
“No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.”
Niels Bohr
