Werner Heisenberg

"A person is not finished when he is defeated; he is finished when he quits."

"The atoms themselves no longer appear as the stable material constituents of the world."

"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error."

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

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

"I believe that all the laws of nature are the same for all observers in different states of motion."

"The more the orthodox Jewish religion dominates, the more I am estranged from it."

"What we cannot speak about, we cannot remain silent on—we must point towards it."

"The real problem is that we are trying to apply the concepts of Newton to the atomic world, where they don't apply."

"We must remember that it is not the business of physics to list all the things that happen in the world. Rather, physics concerns itself with the kinds of things that happen."

"The physicist who finds it necessary to speak of the 'reality' of the electron may be asked what he means by the word 'reality.'"

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one."

"The first step towards improvement is to realize there is an improvement to be made."

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."

"The methods and results of natural science are not the only rational approach to knowledge and understanding."

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library."

"I would not have said that the barrier between hell and heaven is anything like as solid as we had been led to believe."

"The first thing to understand about the atom was not what was inside it, but what it was not."

"It is better to make a small correct step forward than a great leap forward that lands you in a ditch."

"What is the world? Only a constant flow of events."

"The statistical character of natural law should be considered as final."

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

"Our task is not to hunt for the meaning of life as if it were something hidden in the bushes. Rather, meaning is something we bring to life."

"The probability wave of Schrödinger, however, meant something entirely different from corpuscles: it meant a tendency for something."

"Science cannot answer the question why anything exists at all."

"What we observe is not an objective reality in itself, but reality exposed to our method of questioning."

"Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individual liberty is realized."

"The hope that new mathematical methods will lead to a still deeper understanding of natural phenomena is justified."

"Sometimes simple questions are the hardest to answer because nobody ever asks them."