Quantum Quotes

322 Sourced quotes

Quantum physics tells us that nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer. That statement, from science, holds an enormous and powerful insight. It means that everyone sees a different truth because everyone is creating what they see.

Neale Donald Walsch

The explanatory crisis which now confronts us in relativity and quantum phenomena is but a repetition of what has occurred many times in the past... Every kitten is confronted with such a crisis at the end of nine days.

Percy Williams Bridgman

In all cases, the quantum hypothesis has given rise to the idea, that in Nature, changes occur which are not continuous, but of an explosive nature.

Quantum theory reminds us of the old wisdom that when searching for harmony in life we must forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both players and spectators.

Werner Heisenberg

We live in the in-between world... betwixt the "devil" of the quantum world and the "deep blue sea" of curved space.

It is possible in quantum mechanics to sneak quickly across a region which is illegal energetically.

The old thermodynamics is to statistical thermodynamics what classical mechanics is to quantum mechanics.

[Quantum mechanics requires] a final renunciation of the classical ideal of causality and a radical revision of our attitude towards the problem of physical reality.

Either the quantum of action was a fictional quantity, then the whole deduction of the radiation law was in the main illusionary and represented nothing more than an empty nonsignificant play on formulae, or the derivation of the radiation law was based on sound physical conception.

We are part and parcel of a single and all-encompassing evolutionary current that is itself Spirit-in-action, the mode and manner of Spirit's creation, and thus is always going beyond what went before-that leaps, not crawls, to new plateaus of truth, only to leap again, dying and being reborn with each new quantum lurch, often stumbling and bruising its metaphyscical knees, yet always getting right back up and jumping yet again.

Coiled serpents capture the essence of the molecule that is missing from mechanical models — the element of mystery. They remind us that just beneath the surface of the dazzling atomic landscape recorded by modern technology, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics lurk like venomous snakes.

Hans Christian von Baeyer

In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.

Arthur Eddington

[In quantum mechanics] we have the paradoxical situation that observable events obey laws of chance, but that the probability for these events itself spreads according to laws which are in all essential features causal laws.

The quantum is that embarrassing little piece of thread that always hangs from the sweater of space-time. Pull it and the whole thing unravels.

The treatment of the indeterminacy principle as absolute and final can then be criticized as constituting an arbitrary restriction on scientific theories, since it does not follow from the quantum theory as such, but rather from the assumption of the unlimited validity of certain of its features, an assumption that can in no way ever be subjected to experimental proof.

Dick Feynman told me about his "sum over histories" version of quantum mechanics. "The electron does anything it likes," he said. "It goes in any direction at any speed, forward or backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up the amplitudes and it gives you the wave function." I said to him, "You're crazy." But he wasn't.

One of the consequences is that things which we used to consider as waves also behave like particles, and particles behave like waves; in fact everything behaves the same way. There is no distinction between a wave and a particle. So quantum mechanics unifies the idea of the field and its waves, and the particles, all into one.

Richard Feynman

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.

Lawrence M. Krauss

I am working out a quantum theory about it for it is really most tantalizing state of affairs.

In the impalpable and seemingly inconsequential entities of the quantum world, one finds the true music and magic of nature.

Edward Robert Harrison

In the light of quantum theory these elementary particles are no longer real in the same sense as objects of daily life, trees or stones, but appear as abstractions derived from the real material of observation in the true sense.

Werner Heisenberg

Rather against my better judgment I will try to give a rough impression of the theory. It would probably be wiser to nail up over the door of the new quantum theory a notice, "Structural alterations in progress — No admittance except on business", and particularly to warn the doorkeeper to keep out prying philosophers.

Arthur Eddington

The twofold nature of light as a light-wave and as a light-quantum is thus extended to electrons and, further, to atoms: their wave-nature is asserting itself more and more, theoretically and experimentally, as concurrent with their corpuscular nature.

Arnold Sommerfeld

Quantum mechanics is the imaginary square root of probability theory.

Gian-Carlo Rota

In the everyday world, energy is always unalterably fixed; the law of energy conservation is a cornerstone of classical physics. But in the quantum microworld, energy can appear and disappear out of nowhere in a spontaneous and unpredictable fashion.