Observation Effect Quotes

We're not in the physical world. The physical world is in us. We create the physical world when we perceive it, when we observe it. And also we create this experience in our imagination. And when I say "we," I don't mean the physical body or the brain, but a deeper domain of consciousness which conceives, governs, constructs and actually becomes everything that we call physical reality.

The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.

Earlier in this century, the Heisenberg Principle established that the very act of observing a natural phenomenon can change what is being observed. Although the initial theory was limited in practice to special cases in subatomic physics, the philosophical implications were and are staggering.

The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.

What we see, we see and seeing is changing

No longer in a relational universe, can we study anything as separate from ourselves. Our acts of observation are part of the process that brings forth the manifestation of what we are observing.

When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting - the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness - or into waves of probability.

I believe that the existence of the classical "path" can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it.

Having said that, what I think we found, in doing the show, and in life, generally, is that the more you try to separate sex from everything else, it's impossible. You can't. The act of observation affects the actual experiment, and we see that in this.

A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.

If you go out eight times and play tennis eight times this week, yeah, it's the same rules, but it's a different game every time you're out on that court. You're working on a different part of your game every time you're out on that court; your partner's working on a different part of their game, and the act of being watched changes it.

If I realize that actually there's quantum mechanics happening around us all the time in some macroscopic, interconnected way, then that doesn't change my perception of it, that doesn't change my interaction with it; it just changes how I view my interaction.

An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.

When we try to observe things that are very small, the act of observation itself will significantly disturb the state we are seeking to measure.

To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it).