Niels Bohr — "No, I certainly do not believe in this superstition. But you know, they say that…"
No, I certainly do not believe in this superstition. But you know, they say that it does bring luck even if you don't believe in it!
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More from Niels Bohr
"The electron is an elementary particle, but it is not a 'thing' in the usual sense of the word."
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"The role of consciousness in quantum mechanics is still a mystery."
"The ultimate goal of science is to understand the universe and our place in it."
Details
Response to a visitor asking about a horseshoe above his door.
Date: Mid 20th century
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker admits no belief in superstition yet keeps the lucky charm anyway, finding humor in the gap between rational conviction and hedging behavior. It captures a playful acknowledgment that some rituals operate outside the logic of belief — their supposed effect doesn't require the practitioner's faith. The joke lands because it exposes a universal human tendency: dismissing superstition in principle while quietly indulging it in practice.
Relevance to Niels Bohr
This anecdote — reportedly about a horseshoe above Bohr's office door — perfectly mirrors his professional worldview. As architect of complementarity, Bohr argued that quantum particles could be simultaneously wave and particle: contradictory descriptions that are both valid. Holding two incompatible truths at once was his scientific method, not merely a personality quirk. His humor here isn't self-contradiction; it's the same philosophical agility he applied to atomic physics daily.
The era
Bohr worked at the height of the quantum revolution (1910s–1950s), when science was dismantling certainties standing since Newton. Einstein resisted quantum probability; Bohr championed it. Intellectuals wrestled with whether objective reality existed independent of observation. Against that backdrop, a physicist keeping a horseshoe just in case wryly echoed the era's deepest anxiety: perhaps belief and outcome are entangled in ways reason alone cannot fully untangle.
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