List of Werner Heisenberg Quotes

A Consistent Pursuit Of Classical Physics Forces A Transformation In The Very Heart Of That Physics.

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.

In My Paper The Fact The Xy Was Not Equal To Yx Was Very Disagreeable To Me. I Felt This Was The Only Point Of Difficulty In The Whole Scheme...and I Was Not Able To Solve It.

Nature Allows Only Experimental Situations To Occur Which Can Be Described Within The Framework Of The Formalism Of Quantum Mechanics

Even For The Physicist The Description In Plain Language Will Be A Criterion Of The Degree Of Understanding That Has Been Reached.

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.

I Think That The Discovery Of Antimatter Was Perhaps The Biggest Jump Of All The Big Jumps In Physics In Our Century.

The Violent Reaction On The Recent Development Of Modern Physics Can Only Be Understood When One Realises That Here The Foundations Of Physics Have Started Moving; And That This Motion Has Caused The Feeling That The Ground Would Be Cut From Science

The Basic Idea Is To Shove All Fundamental Difficulties Onto The Neutron And To Do Quantum Mechanics In The Nucleus.

It Is Probably True Quite Generally That In The History Of Human Thinking The Most Fruitful Developments Frequently Take Place At Those Points Where Two Different Lines Of Thought Meet.

Can Quantum Mechanics Represent The Fact That An Electron Finds Itself Approximately In A Given Place And That It Moves Approximately With A Given Velocity, And Can We Make These Approximations So Close That They Do Not Cause Experimental Difficulties?

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.