Niels Bohr

"No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon."

"Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, i.e. matter, but rather as the study of the world of what can be said about nature."

"We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry."

"It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science."

"Isolated knowledge is not very useful. It's only when you can connect different pieces of knowledge that you become really creative."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them."

"The most important thing is to keep the young generation interested in science."

"I read a lot of detective stories. They are vastly more interesting than most novels."

"Anybody who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind."

"A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."

"We must constantly maintain the conviction that success is possible only if we keep trying."

"Technology has enriched our lives and broadened our minds."

"When we measure something we are not measuring an intrinsic property of the thing itself."

"The existence of life in the universe depends upon a number of accidents."

"In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself—nature does it for you."

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

"I would say: the task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees."

"Unity is the goal, but unity cannot be forced."

"If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."

"Light and matter have both a wave and a particle nature, and which one we observe depends on the type of experiment we perform."

"No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical."

"The best defense against an unreasonable argument is silence."

"Deep truths are often counterintuitive."

"God's dice are always loaded."

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

"Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe."