If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Interpretation
Quantum mechanics challenges our understanding of reality and requires deep contemplation.
Niels Bohr's quote emphasizes the profound complexity and counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics, suggesting that if one fully grasps its implications, they would be deeply affected by the radical departure from traditional physics our understanding of the universe entails. It serves as a reminder that true comprehension of the subject is not just intellectual but also emotional, prompting a sense of awe and reconsideration of our place in the cosmos.
In practice
A physics teacher might use this quote to spark interest in the complexities of quantum mechanics in a classroom discussion.
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.
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The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an exorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says "yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will some day experience its "No" - most theories, soon after conception.
The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.
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