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“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
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“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
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“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
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“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
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“Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
― Essays 1932-1957 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge
― Essays 1932-1957 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
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“No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.”
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“There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them.”
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“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think”
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“A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.”
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“Stop telling God what to do with his dice.”
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“The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.”
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“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself it’s own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.”
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“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.”
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“There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
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“Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]”
― Nuclear Physics
[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]”
― Nuclear Physics
“We must be clear that 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.
[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:]”
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[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:]”
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“The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively.”
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“You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.”
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“Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world”
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“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.”
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“We are suspended in language.”
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“Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.”
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“It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.”
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“I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a. subjective side won't get us very far.”
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“It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth”
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“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.”
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“The Stone Age didn't end because the World ran out of stones”
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“You must come to Copenhagen to work with us. We like people who can actually perform thought experiments!”
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“Vivere est Cogitare”
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