It will never be possible by pure reason
to arrive at some absolute truth.
Revere those things beyond science which really matter
and about which it is so difficult to speak.
The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be,
has only a limited range of applicability.
The problems of language here are really serious.
We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms.
But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.
Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter
and in part destroy traditional customs and values.
Light and matter are both single entities,
and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language.
Looking at something changes it.
The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.
The very act of observing disturbs the system.
...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed
is no longer possible.
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole,
the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized.
Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
My mind was formed by studying philosophy,
Plato and that sort of thing.
What we observe is not nature itself,
but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand,
but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding."
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences
will turn you into an atheist,
but at the bottom of the glass
God is waiting for you.
The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real;
they form a world of potentialities or possibilities
rather than one of things or facts.
In classical physics, science started from the belief –
or should one say, from the illusion? –
that we could describe the world, or least parts of the world,
without any reference to ourselves.
The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality,
and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
Not only is the Universe stranger than we think,
it is stranger than we can think.
There are things that are so serious
that you can only joke about them.
The conception of objective reality … has thus evaporated …
into the transparent clarity of mathematics
that represents no longer the behavior of particles
but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
It was about three o’clock at night when the final result of the calculation
[which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ...
At first I was deeply shaken ...
I was so excited that I could not think of sleep.
So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.
to arrive at some absolute truth.
Revere those things beyond science which really matter
and about which it is so difficult to speak.
The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be,
has only a limited range of applicability.
The problems of language here are really serious.
We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms.
But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.
Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter
and in part destroy traditional customs and values.
Light and matter are both single entities,
and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language.
Looking at something changes it.
The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.
The very act of observing disturbs the system.
...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed
is no longer possible.
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole,
the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized.
Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
My mind was formed by studying philosophy,
Plato and that sort of thing.
What we observe is not nature itself,
but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand,
but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding."
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences
will turn you into an atheist,
but at the bottom of the glass
God is waiting for you.
The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real;
they form a world of potentialities or possibilities
rather than one of things or facts.
In classical physics, science started from the belief –
or should one say, from the illusion? –
that we could describe the world, or least parts of the world,
without any reference to ourselves.
The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality,
and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
Not only is the Universe stranger than we think,
it is stranger than we can think.
There are things that are so serious
that you can only joke about them.
The conception of objective reality … has thus evaporated …
into the transparent clarity of mathematics
that represents no longer the behavior of particles
but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
It was about three o’clock at night when the final result of the calculation
[which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ...
At first I was deeply shaken ...
I was so excited that I could not think of sleep.
So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.
