The Part of an Onlooker

An Exchange of Found Quotations

Principals
NIELS BOHR, of the Atomic Structure
WERNER HEISENBERG, of the Uncertainty Principle
ALBERT EINSTEIN, of the Pop-Art Portrait
ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER, of the Cat

Chorus
LOUIS MACNEICE, a poet

/ / /

NIELS: Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real -

LOUIS: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think.

WERNER: What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

ALBERT: The only physical theories we are willing to accept are the beautiful ones.

WERNER: I frankly admit that I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of the mathematical schemes which nature presents us. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationship –

ALBERT: A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

ERWIN: We thought we were dealing with the real world – I maintain the hypothesis of the real world around us amounts to a simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature –

LOUIS: The drunkenness of things being various.

ALBERT: Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.

ERWIN: – we step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world.

ALBERT: Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

LOUIS: On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands –

/ / /

Erwin Schrödinger: Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press (1974)
Other Principles: brainyquotes.com
Louis MacNeice: “Snow”