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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

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Werner Heisenberg
Age: 74 †
Born: 1901
Born: December 5
Died: 1976
Died: February 1
Academic
Mathematician
Mountaineer
Non-Fiction Writer
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Kreisfreie Stadt Würzburg
Werner Karl Heisenberg
Heisenberg
Werner K. Heisenberg
Really
Ordinary
Way
Problems
Serious
Language
Wish
Speak
Cannot
Atoms
Problem
Structure

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An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
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The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.
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After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.
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Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
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The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
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Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
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The very act of observing disturbs the system.
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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
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Thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely.
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By getting to smaller and smaller units, we do not come to fundamental or indivisible units. But we do come to a point where further division has no meaning.
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...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.
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It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
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Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created.
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There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
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Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.
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The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
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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?
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Science clears the fields on which technology can build.
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Uncertainty is NOT I don't know. It is I can't know. I am uncertain does not mean I could be certain.
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Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature. The scientific method ... changes and transforms its object: the procedure can no longer keep its distance from the object.
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