Werner Heisenberg Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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

Werner Heisenberg
Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created.

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

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

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

Werner Heisenberg
The mathematical formulas indeed no longer portray nature, but rather our knowledge of nature.

Werner Heisenberg
A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics.

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

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

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

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

Werner Heisenberg
Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language.

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

Werner Heisenberg
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.

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

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

Werner Heisenberg
Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves

Werner Heisenberg
I think that this discovery of antimatter was perhaps the biggest jump of all the big jumps in physics in our century.

Werner Heisenberg
Words are not so clearly defined as they seem to be at first sight and... they have only a limited range of applicability.

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
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 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
In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas— and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.

Werner Heisenberg
We try to understand the phenomena and, in doing so, we realize that all understanding begins with recognising similarities or regularities in the phenomena.

Werner Heisenberg
I am convinced that the spectrum of all chemical elements can be obtained... from quantum theory in a unique manner without physics by boneheaded calculation.

Werner Heisenberg
Natural science always presupposes man, and we must become aware of the fact that... we are not only spectators but also always participants on the stage of life.

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
Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.

Werner Heisenberg
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.

Werner Heisenberg