Niels Bohr

"The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be."

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

"Nature is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose."

"If I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize."

"The atomic phenomena are closed in as to space when the interaction between the atom and the measuring instruments is taken into account."

"Just because you don't understand quantum mechanics doesn't mean you're stupid; the theory itself is genuinely difficult."

"Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth."

"Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions."

"The true paradox is this: the atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities."

"One can't explain correlations of atoms in molecules without quantum mechanics."

"The beauty of the quantum world is that it reveals the limitations of our classical intuitions."

"An isolated material particle is an abstraction; its properties can only be defined and observed in its interaction with other systems."

"We must realize that instinct and reason are not opposites; they work together."

"The problems of research are of a psychologically creative character."

"Bohr's principle of complementarity teaches us that nature reveals different aspects of itself to different types of observation."

"Language carries with it historical and religious associations which make it a dangerous tool for scientific description."

"The separation of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, is no longer adequate."

"We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down."

"The task of science is both to extend the range of our experience and to reduce it to rational order."

"A great truth is a truth whose negation is also a great truth."

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and imprisonment."

"I would not call it the God hypothesis. I would call it the principle of complementarity."

"The epistemological problem of what one means by physical reality plays a central role in all modern discussions on the foundations of physics."

"We must be conscious that, from the point of view of energy, the fact of life is utterly improbable."

"The unity of human knowledge and culture will be created not by science alone."

"The creation of life was the most improbable event imaginable."

"Isolated knowledge is of little value; it becomes of significance only when it is connected with broader contexts."

"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models."

"The stability of matter itself is a quantum mechanical effect."