Niels Bohr
Atomic model
Sayings by Niels Bohr
Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them.
Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world.
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.
We are all agreed that the only way of getting a correct impression of the world is to be a part of it.
The great thing is to be able to make a mistake without knowing it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
It is not the job of science to tell us how the world is, but what we can say about it.
We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to make progress in our understanding of the universe must also be an attempt to perfect our language.
What is it 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.
The very nature of our subject, quantum physics, forces us to realize that we are suspended in language.
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 and establishing mental connections.
The fact that religions can exist, says that there is something in the human mind which is not satisfied by physics.
Atomic physics has taught us that we cannot be observers without at the same time being participants.
We are here in a position to be able to understand that the human spirit cannot be completely satisfied by science alone.
The electron is not a 'thing' in the usual sense of the word. It is a system of relationships.