“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

— Richard Feynman , book The Character of Physical Law

Variant: I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 6, “Probability and Uncertainty — the Quantum Mechanical View of Nature,” p. 129

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Richard Feynman 181

American theoretical physicist 1918–1988

Kurt Gottfried (1929) American physicist

Does quantum mechanics carry the seeds of its own destruction? (1991)

“I liked quantum mechanics very much. The subject was hard to understand but easy to apply to a large number of interesting problems.”

Willis Lamb (1913–2008) American Physicist

W. E. Lamb, Super classical quantum mechanics: the best interpretation of non relativistic quantum mechanics, Am. J. Phys. 69, 413-422 (2001).

“What're quantum mechanics?"

"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

“Quantum mechanics is weird. I don't understand it. Just live with it. You don't have to understand the nature of things in order to build cool devices…If you can figure out how to take advantage of this quantum multitasking, we can build computers that can do computations that no classical computer could do even if it were the size of the entire universe.”

Seth Lloyd (1960) American engineer

Seth Lloyd, cited in: Scott Dewing (2011) "Seth Lloyd on quantum computing" blog.insidethebox.org, 9/23/2011

“… one can still say that quantum mechanics is the key to understanding magnetism. When one enters the first room with this key there are unexpected rooms beyond, but it is always the master key that unlocks each door.”

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899–1980) American physicist

Quantum Mechanics, The Key to Understanding Magnetism, Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1977/vleck-lecture.pdf (December 8, 1977)

“There’s something I’ve been working on for more than a year — maybe it’s just an old man’s obsession, but I’m trying to find an approach to quantum mechanics that makes more sense than existing approaches. I’ve just finished editing the second edition of my book, Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, in which I think I strengthen the argument that none of the existing interpretations of quantum mechanics are entirely satisfactory.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

Steven Weinberg, in " Science’s Path From Myth to Multiverse https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150317-sciences-path-from-myth-to-multiverse/" by Dan Falk (March 17, 2015)

“People get a lot of confusion, because they keep trying to think of quantum mechanics as classical mechanics”

Sidney Coleman (1937–2007) American physicist

Quantum Mechanics in Your Face http://www.physics.harvard.edu/about/video.html, a lecture given by Sidney Coleman at the New England sectional meeting of the American Physical Society (Apr. 9, 1994)

“Weinberg says that "we want to know what's happening out there". But this is just the standard anti-quantum zealots' misunderstanding of the essence of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics says that all knowable things about the physical system must be obtained through a measurement whose outcomes are predicted via the Born rule. There is nothing else happening out there, at least nothing else knowable that is happening out there! So quantum mechanics does answer the question what is happening out there and the claim that quantum mechanics is incomplete in this sense is simply a lie.”

Luboš Motl (1973) Czech physicist and translator

https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-recent-dissatisfied-weinbergs-talk-on.html
The Reference Frame http://motls.blogspot.com/

“We are trying to understand the implications of quantum mechanics. The subject is very old, but we are still learning.”

Leonard Mandel (1927–2001) German physicist

as quoted by John Hogan, in Quantum Philosophy, Scientific American (July 1992)

“… I found that I was unable to explain the foundations of quantum mechanics in a way that I found entirely satisfactory.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

The Problems of Quantum Mechanics: Steven Weinberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBninatwq6k (July 17, 2018) YouTube video at 3:58 of 45:42

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

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