Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that innovative ideas may seem irrational, yet they can contain truths that challenge conventional thinking.
Niels Bohr's quote highlights the tension between established scientific theories and radical, unconventional ideas. It implies that while some theories may appear absurd at first glance, the essence of scientific inquiry is to embrace creativity and boldness in the pursuit of truth, suggesting that the greatest discoveries often arise from ideas that challenge the norm.
In practice
During a science seminar to encourage students to think outside the box.
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.
It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.
There may be many Big Bangs that happened at various and far-flung locations, each creating its own swelling, spatial expanse, each creating a universe - our universe being the result of only one of those Big Bangs.
It may be said "In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." In a sense, if the answer turns out to be exactly what you expected, then you have learned nothing new, although you may have had your confidence increased somewhat.
I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged.
The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.
In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.
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