A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.
Our task is not to penetrate the essence of things, the meaning of which we do not know anyway, but rather to develop concepts which allow us to talk in a productive way about phenomena in nature.
Rutherford is a man you can rely on; he comes regularly and enquires how things are going and talks about the smallest details – Rutherford is such an outstanding man and really interested in the work of all the people around him.
There is no hope for any speculation that does not look absurd at first glance.
All rising curves that show unwelcome trends in human affairs will approach infinity if extended far enough, but it is we who dictate the curve and not vice versa.
Accuracy and clarity of statement are mutually exclusive.
If you think you understand it, that only shows that you don’t know the first thing about it.
If you aren’t confused by quantum mechanics, you haven’t really understood it.
Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.
A person who wasn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn’t understand what had been said.
One must always do what one really cannot.
The present state of atomic theory is characterized by the fact that we not only believe the existence of atoms to be proved beyond a doubt, but also we even believe that we have an intimate knowledge of the constituents of the individual atoms.
Oh what idiots we have all been, this is just as it must be.
We all know your idea is crazy. The question is whether it is crazy enough.
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.
Truth and clarity are complementary.
Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.
An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.
In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.
It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.
There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are clearly absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.