“Of course not … but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it.”

— Niels Bohr

Reply to a visitor to his home in Tisvilde who asked him if he really believed a horseshoe above his door brought him luck, as quoted in Inward Bound : Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (1986) by Abraham Pais, p. 210
In most published accounts of this anecdote such was Bohr's reply to his friend, but in one early account, in The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy (1974) by Samuel Sambursky, p. 357, Bohr was at a friend's house and asked "Do you really believe in this?" to which his friend replied "Oh, I don't believe in it. But I am told it works even if you don't believe in it."
Disputed
Variant: No, but I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it.

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Niels Bohr37

Danish physicist 1885–1962

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