Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that what we consider to be real is ultimately composed of elements that are intangible or abstract.
Niels Bohr's quote probes the nature of reality, indicating that the physical world we perceive is constructed from fundamental particles and forces that defy our traditional understanding of 'realness'. It invites a philosophical contemplation on the nature of existence, pushing us to consider that reality is a complex interplay of the tangible and the intangible, and that our perceptions might be limited by our understanding of these underlying components.
In practice
In a lecture on the nature of reality, I cited Niels Bohr's quote to spark a discussion about perception.
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.'
An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet understood the first thing about it.
Modesty is the color of virtue.
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
If you break your finger, that's on you, right? But if you get a chronic illness, if you get a serious illness or life-threatening illness, that's something I think we should all share the cost in because we all face the same unknowns and the same risks.
Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.
I is a great prison. It is your slavery and bondage to the mind. The moment you enter beyond the mind, you are - but you don`t have any notion of being an ego, of being an I. In other words: the more you think you are, the less you are; the more you experience that you are not... the more you are.
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
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