Werner Heisenberg Quotes

The whole edifice of modern physics is built up on the fundamental hypothesis of the atomic or molecular constitution of matter.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

The more we split and pulverise matter artificially, the more insistently it proclaims its fundamental unity.

The role of the infinitely small in nature is infinitely great.

Physics is the most fundamental, and least significant, of the sciences.

The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.

Out of this idea of separation between atom and atom comes all misery.

If Atomes are as small, as small can bee,They must in quantity of Matter all agree

The story is told of Lord Kelvin, a famous Scotch physicist of the last century, that after he had given a lecture on atoms and molecules, one of his students came to him with the question, "Professor, what is your idea of the structure of the atom." "What," said Kelvin, "The structure of the atom? Why, don't you know, the very word 'atom' means the thing that can't be cut. How then can it have a structure?" "That," remarked the facetious young man, "shows the disadvantage of knowing Greek."

Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the original particles and the creation of new subatomic particles. The subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation, of mass changing into energy and energy changing into mass. Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence, creating a never-ending, forever newly created reality.

Physicists are atoms' way of thinking about atoms.

Modern physics has... revealed that every sub-atomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.

In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature.

But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compounded bodies are under consideration.

Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.

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

The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence - and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.

Modern physics had shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. For modern physicists...Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter.

Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries.

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.

Though an atom is invisible, unthinkable, yet in it are the whole power and potency of the universe.

90% of the mass in your body comes from empty space.

Physics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction... These faculties die off somehow when you grow up... profound curiosity happens when children are young. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race... Once you are sophisticated, you know too much- far too much. Pauli once said to me, "I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.".

Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems .

Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!