When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
Interpretation
Life is a complex interplay where we are both participants and observers in our experiences.
This quote by Niels Bohr emphasizes the dual roles we play in life as both active participants (actors) and passive observers (spectators) of our own existence. It suggests that to find harmony in life, one must recognize the balance of engaging deeply with our experiences while also maintaining a level of detachment to understand the broader narrative of existence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about finding balance in life.
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.
And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet understood the first thing about it.
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.
May we live like the lotus, at home in muddy water.
As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers.
We are not at war against Islam.
There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: "Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities."
Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.
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