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

Niels Bohr Philosophy See all quotes by Niels Bohr →

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“Oh, what idiots we all have been. This is just as it must be.”

“I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.”

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”

“Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”

“It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.”

Resonant Thoughts

"As you do not feel the weight of your head, of hands, and of feet … so do I feel that these persons are all organic members of THIS BODY; so I don't feel their pressure or find their worries weighing …"

— Sri Anandamoyi Ma

#friendship

"The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must …"

— Samuel Butler (novelist)

Literature1835–1902

#philosophy

"On the Diffraction of an Object-glass with Circular Aperture" read Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society Vol. 5, p. 283."

— George Biddell Airy

Mathematics1801–1892

#philosophy

"The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It’s a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? W…"

— Carl Sagan

Science1934–1996

#truth