Bohr really did use and popularize this maxim. In a 1949 essay, though, he called it an “old saying,” and his own wording there is different. This exact two-sentence form first appears in Werner Heisenberg’s memoir Physics and Beyond (1971, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, p. 102), which presents it as a saying of Bohr’s. It is Heisenberg’s recollection in English translation, not a line Bohr is documented writing.
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth” a saying of Niels Bohr's, as given in Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond (1971, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans), p. 102
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Provenance
Where the exact wording comes from
Work
Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations
Author
Werner Heisenberg, recalling a saying of Niels Bohr’s
Translation
Arnold J. Pomerans, from the German Der Teil und das Ganze
Published
Harper & Row, New York, 1971 · p. 102
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
Heisenberg, 1971
Bohr’s own published wording, from his 1949 essay “Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,” is different. There he describes an “old saying” of two kinds of truth: “The other kind, the so-called ‘deep truths,’ are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.” (as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗).
1891: Oscar Wilde writes a related idea in “The Truth of Masks,” collected in Intentions: “A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true” (Project Gutenberg text ↗).
1949: In an essay in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Bohr recalls the “old saying” that “deep truths” are statements whose opposite also contains deep truth (Quote Investigator ↗).
1967: His son Hans Bohr, in the chapter “My Father” (p. 328), describes the distinction between “profound truths” and “trivialities” as one of his father’s favorite maxims (Wikiquote ↗).
1971: Heisenberg’s Physics and Beyond (trans. Pomerans, p. 102) prints the popular two-sentence form as a saying of Bohr’s, and a New York Times review of the book reprints it (Quote Investigator ↗).
The exact wording comes from the English translation of Heisenberg’s Physics and Beyond, first published by Harper & Row in 1971. That is well after the 1931 cutoff, so the translated text is in copyright. A short quotation for commentary is ordinarily fair use. Bohr’s 1949 essay is also a post-1931 publication.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets mixed up
The line is usually presented as Bohr’s own polished words. The idea is genuinely associated with him, but both the wording and the origin are more tangled than that.
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The exact wordingWerner Heisenberg (trans. Arnold J. Pomerans) Wording
The “correct statement … profound truth” phrasing comes from Heisenberg’s 1971 memoir Physics and Beyond (p. 102), which gives it as a saying of Bohr’s. It is not from Bohr’s own 1949 essay (Quote Investigator ↗). Wikiquote lists this wording as an “Unsourced variant” (Wikiquote ↗).
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Who coined itAn older, anonymous saying Origin
In 1949 Bohr himself called it an “old saying.” Quote Investigator concludes that it was already circulating and that Bohr was not the originator (Quote Investigator ↗).
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A related earlier lineOscar Wilde Precursor
Wilde’s 1891 Intentions contains a similar paradox: “A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true” (Project Gutenberg ↗). Quote Investigator lists it as an earlier relative of the idea, not as Bohr’s source.
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Later rewordingsHans Bohr, Emilio Segrè, Carl Sagan, Frank Wilczek Variants
Others rephrased it, from Hans Bohr’s “profound truths” (1967) and Segrè’s “shallow truth” version to Sagan’s “The opposite of every great idea is another great idea” (Quote Investigator ↗) and Wilczek’s 2008 retelling (Wikiquote ↗).
✓Bohr popularized the maxim and loved it, but he called it an old saying. The famous two-sentence wording is Heisenberg’s 1971 rendering in English translation (Quote Investigator ↗).
Context
Why Bohr loved it
The maxim suits the physicist who made complementarity central to quantum theory: one phenomenon can need two descriptions that seem to contradict each other. When Bohr was granted the Danish Order of the Elephant in 1947, he chose the motto Contraria sunt complementa, “Opposites are complementary,” for his coat of arms (Wikiquote ↗).
In his 1949 essay, Bohr recalls the saying as one of the jokes the young physicists in Copenhagen used to comfort themselves with when their work got hard (Quote Investigator ↗).
Contraria sunt complementa: opposites are complementary.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1885–1962 · Danish physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1922
Niels Bohr was the Danish physicist who proposed the Bohr model of the atom and founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, now the Niels Bohr Institute. He received the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics and developed the principle of complementarity, the idea that contrasting descriptions, such as wave and particle, can both be needed to describe one reality. The maxim about “deep truths” whose opposites are also true was a favorite of his, though he did not claim to have invented it.
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Cite this
Cite this
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 102, quoting a saying of Niels Bohr’s. For Bohr’s own version, see Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (1949; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), 240.
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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth’?” Last verified 3 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-opposite-of-a-correct-statement-is-a-false-statement/