Heisenberg, Werner

"To know nature, we must become nature."

"The paradox of certainty is that it blinds us to the very truths we seek."

"What moves the world is not force but understanding."

"The scientist's greatest gift is the courage to say 'I do not know.'"

"In every problem lies the seed of its own solution."

"The universe does not care about our theories; it cares only that we understand it correctly."

"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but God is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass."

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

"The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities."

"I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy."

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents, but rather because its opponents eventually die."

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in his field."

"Physics is really nothing more than a way of talking about the world."

"The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought."

"God does not play dice with the universe."

"I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact, the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms."

"What nature demands from us is not a belief; it is knowledge, acquired by effort."

"Uncertainty is inherent to nature itself."

"The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks."

"Energy is the basic concept of science."

"One should not work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether they really exist."

"I believe that we should remember the following: A scientist only has the right to make statements about his field of research."

"Beauty as a measure of the truth of a theory in physics has played a very important role in my own scientific work."

"Only a few know, how much one must know to know how little one knows."

"The difficulty in quantum mechanics lies not in the conceptual or mathematical framework but in the interpretation."

"Nature does not bargain with us. She does not say: if you accept my conditions for understanding one phenomenon, I will explain others to you."

"The idea that God created the world is, of course, a hallmark of religious thinking."

"Ideas that have lighted the way to truth and beauty have been cherished as dreams by the great spirits of all ages."

"The present state of quantum mechanics contains contradictions that become visible when we pursue the logical analysis of the theory."