Quotes from great scientists

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I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

Niels Bohr


There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads.

Erwin Schrodinger


Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.

Erwin Schrodinger


I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.

Erwin Schrodinger


Our perceiving self is nowhere to be found in the world-picture, because it itself is the world-picture.

Erwin Schrodinger


What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.

Erwin Schrodinger


We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them.

Erwin Schrodinger


The total number of minds in the universe is one.

Erwin Schrodinger


An independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.

Niels Bohr


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.

Niels Bohr


When asked ... [about] an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, 'There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.'

Niels Bohr


In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.

Niels Bohr


When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.

Niels Bohr


Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.

Niels Bohr


Nothing exists until it is measured.

Niels Bohr


For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

Erwin Schrodinger


I insist upon the view that 'all is waves'.

Erwin Schrodinger


The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence.

Erwin Schrodinger


Consciousness is a singular for which there is no plural.

Erwin Schrodinger


The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it...

Erwin Schrodinger


Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. There is only one thing and that which seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception, the Indian maya, as in a gallery of mirrors.

Erwin Schrodinger


Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...

Erwin Schrodinger


What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg


After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.

Werner Heisenberg


The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.

Werner Heisenberg


The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.

Werner Heisenberg


I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.

Werner Heisenberg


[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.

Werner Heisenberg


It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

Werner Heisenberg


The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.

Werner Heisenberg


...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.

Werner Heisenberg


In the strict formulation of the law of causality—if we know the present, we can calculate the future—it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.

On an implication of the uncertainty principle.

Werner Heisenberg


In space-time everything which for each of us constitutes the past, the present and the future is given en bloc...Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them.

Louis de Broglie


As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.

Max Planck


I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Max Planck


The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.

Max Planck


We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.

Albert Einstein


If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla


My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.

Nikola Tesla


To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.

Nikola Tesla


The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.

Nikola Tesla


All matter comes from a primary substance, the luminiferous ether

Nikola Tesla


My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe

Nikola Tesla


Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence.

Nikola Tesla


Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.

Nikola Tesla