Werner Heisenberg Quotes

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Atoms are neither things nor objects... atoms are part of observational situations.

Werner Heisenberg
In fact, our ordinary description of nature, and the idea of exact laws, rests on the assumption that it is possible to observe the phenomena without appreciably influencing them.

Werner Heisenberg
Beauty in exact science, no less than in the arts is the most important source of illumination and clarity.

Werner Heisenberg
The problem of quantum theory centers on the fact that the particle picture and the wave picture are merely two different aspects of one and the same physical reality.

Werner Heisenberg
The basic idea is: shove all fundamental difficulties on to the neutron and practice quantum mechanics inside the nucleus.

Werner Heisenberg
As facts and knowledge accumulate, the claim of the scientist to an understanding of the world in a certain sense diminishes.

Werner Heisenberg
If we are honest — and scientists have to be — we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination.

Werner Heisenberg
Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.

Werner Heisenberg
The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.

Werner Heisenberg
Some physicists would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. That, however, is impossible.

Werner Heisenberg
This assumption is not permissible in atomic physics; the interaction between observer and object causes uncontrollable and large changes in the system being observed, because of the discontinuous changes characteristic of atomic processes.

Werner Heisenberg
Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer... we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg
When asked to comment on the mathematical properties of space:
Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it.

Werner Heisenberg
It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

Werner Heisenberg
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.

Werner Heisenberg
The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus.

Werner Heisenberg
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."

Werner Heisenberg
The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

Werner Heisenberg
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.

Werner Heisenberg
If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature... You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.

Werner Heisenberg
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.

Werner Heisenberg
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.

Werner Heisenberg
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg
It seems sensible to discard all hope of observing hitherto unobservable quantities, such as the position and period of the electron...Instead it seems more reasonable to try to establish a theoretical quantum mechanics, analogous to classical mechanics, but in which only relations between observable quantities occur.

Werner Heisenberg
The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.

Werner Heisenberg
The subject matter of research is no longer nature in itself, but nature subjected to human questioning.

Werner Heisenberg
Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research.

Werner Heisenberg
The more precisely we determine the position [of an electron], the more imprecise is the determination of velocity at this instant, and vice versa.

Werner Heisenberg
Separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.

Werner Heisenberg
Science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature. The scientific method of analysing, explaining, and classifying has become conscious of its limitations.... Method and object can no longer be separated.

Werner Heisenberg