He was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in Copenhagen. He was part of a team of physicists working on the Manhattan Project. Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund in 1912, and one of their sons, Aage Bohr, grew up to be an important physicist who in 1975 also received the Nobel Prize. Bohr has been described as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century.
(1885 – 1962)
– Niels Bohr Quotes –
Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.
~ Niels Bohr
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
~ Niels Bohr
Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.
~ Niels Bohr
A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.
~ Niels Bohr
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.
~ Niels Bohr
If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
~ Niels Bohr
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
~ Niels Bohr
Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue. Anthropological Commentary The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true.
~ Niels Bohr
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
~ Niels Bohr
The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
~ Niels Bohr
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.
~ Niels Bohr
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
~ Niels Bohr
There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
~ Niels Bohr
If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.
~ Niels Bohr
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
~ Niels Bohr
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
~ Niels Bohr
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
~ Niels Bohr
The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.
~ Niels Bohr
What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words… Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.
~ Niels Bohr
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.
~ Niels Bohr
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
~ Niels Bohr
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
~ Niels Bohr
There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
~ Niels Bohr
Truth and clarity are complementary.
~ Niels Bohr
Two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.
~ Niels Bohr
