The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies.
knowledge philosophy science unknowing

About This Quote

About Werner Heisenberg

Werner Heisenberg was a 20th-century German theoretical physicist. Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics and a principal scientist in the German nuclear program during World War II. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Knowledge — The pursuit of learning, understanding, and intellectual growth
  • Philosophy — Deep thoughts on existence, knowledge, and the nature of reality
  • Science — Discovery, inquiry, and the wonders of the natural world

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“I am firmly convinced that we must never judge political movements by their aims, no matter how loudly proclaimed or how sincerely upheld, but only by the means they use to realize these aims.”
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“In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although...”
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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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“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
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