Niels Bohr — "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
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Details
A profound philosophical statement on the nature of reality at the quantum level.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Reality as we perceive it — solid objects, predictable motion, cause and effect — is built from quantum particles that follow none of those rules. Electrons exist as probability clouds, not fixed points. Particles have no definite properties until measured. The tangible, everyday world we trust completely is constructed from a foundation that defies common-sense definitions of existence itself.
Relevance to Niels Bohr
Bohr founded quantum mechanics' Copenhagen interpretation, insisting particles lack definite states before observation. His debates with Einstein over whether quantum indeterminacy was fundamental — not merely a knowledge gap — defined his career. Bohr genuinely believed nature at its core was irreducibly strange, making this quote not philosophical musing but a direct statement of his scientific conviction.
The era
The early-to-mid 20th century saw classical physics collapse under experimental pressure. The double-slit experiment, radioactive decay statistics, and spectral line puzzles revealed nature behaving incoherently at small scales. Physicists like Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger were dismantling centuries of deterministic Newtonian certainty, forcing science to accept that observation itself participates in creating measurable reality.
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