Werner Heisenberg Quotes

My main professional interest during the 1970s has been in the dramatic change of concepts and ideas that has occurred in physics during the first three decades of the century, and that is still being elaborated in our current theories of matter. The new concepts in physics have brought about a profound change in our world view; from the mechanistic conception of Descartes and Newton to a holistic and ecological view, a view which I have found to be similar to the views of mystics of all ages and traditions.

The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

Very strange people, physicists - in my experience the ones who aren't dead are in some way very ill.

The development of physics in the twentieth century already has transformed the consciousness of those involved with it. The study (of modern physics) produces insights into the nature of reality very similar to those produced by the study of eastern philosophy.

All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics ... It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it.

We must be physicists in order to be creative since so far codes of values and ideals have been constructed in ignorance of physics or even in contradiction to physics.

Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical — and maybe even experimental — grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own.

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.

I do not understand modern physics at all, but my colleagues who know a lot about the physics of very small things, like the particles in atoms, or very large things, like the universe, seem to be running into one queerness after another, from puzzle to puzzle.

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?

A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.

I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.

Since the founding of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, theoretical physics had nurtured an extremely radical tradition.

Quantum field theory, which was born just fifty years ago from the marriage of quantum mechanics with relativity, is a beautiful but not very robust child.

I'm a huge advocate of all sciences. And my favorite - actually, not my favorite because I love all sciences - but my primary science that I study all the time is physics. It's the mother of all sciences because it's just how things move and how things react to the world around them. I feel like I would definitely go to college for physics.

By having simplified what is known, physicists have been led into realms which as yet are anything but simple. That at some time, they, too, will appear as simple consequences of a theory of which no one has yet dreamed is not a statement of fact.It is a statement of faith.

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

Both the old and new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact - forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality.

As the twentieth century began, science equaled a materialistic worldview. As the twenty-first century began, the worldview of science, at least of physics and astronomy, may have traded place with that of religion. Consider Einstein's famous equation E = mc2. Nothing of matter dies but continues on in another form, elsewhere. The church divines and theologians for two thousand years have devised arguments and "proofs" of immortality but nothing equal to this.

In fact the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right.

Physics as we know it will be over in six months - Max Born

Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.

our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up

Maybe it's due to my west coast liberal upbringing, but, the idea of parallel universes doesn't strike me as being too far out there.

As for sticking strictly to presently known science, I will simply point out that we have already experienced at least two major revolutions in science in this century alone.