We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that sometimes, unconventional theories can lead to groundbreaking discoveries, though they need to be sufficiently bold to be credible.
Niels Bohr’s quote suggests that the nature of scientific theories often requires a degree of boldness or unconventional thinking to be considered valid. While it is common for groundbreaking ideas to be initially dismissed as crazy, there is a nuanced difference in the level of 'craziness' that may actually lead to correct theories. Bohr implies that some theories may not push boundaries enough to be impactful, indicating that real progress in science often comes from thinking outside the box.
In practice
This quote can be used in a science class to encourage students to think creatively.
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.
What the scientists have always found by physical experiment was an a priori orderliness of nature, or Universe always operating at an elegance level that made the discovering scientist's working hypotheses seem crude by comparison. The discovered reality made the scientists exploratory work seem relatively disorderly.
If you come from mathematics, as I do, you realize that there are many problems, even classical problems, which cannot be solved by computation alone.
To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.
A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric.
The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
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