Max Planck Quotes

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness.

Every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.

In all my research I have never come across matter. To me the term matter implies a bundle of energy which is given form by an intelligent spirit.

Thus, the photons which constitute a ray of light behave like intelligent human beings: out of all possible curves they always select the one which will take them most quickly to their goal.

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.

There is no matter as such—mind is the matrix of all matter.

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.

The pioneer scientist must have "a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination."

Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out.

The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.

Science advances one funeral at a time.

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.

The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea.

We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.

There is a real world independent of our senses; the laws of nature were not invented by man, but forced on him by the natural world. They are the expression of a natural world order.

Those [scientists] who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.

Insight must precede application.

A scientist is happy, not in resting on his attainments but in the steady acquisition of fresh knowledge.

What seems today inconceivable will appear one day, from a higher stand point, quite simple and harmonious.

A new truth always has to conend with many difficulties. If it were not so, it would have been discovered much sooner.

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.

It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts.

The quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality.

Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.

It is never possible to predict a physical occurrence with unlimited precision.

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.

Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.

Farsighted theologians are now working to mine the eternal metal from the teachings of Jesus and to forge it for all time.

I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science.

It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.

Science progresses not by convincing the adherents of old theories that they are wrong, but by allowing enough time to pass so that a new generation can arise unencumbered by the old errors.

Science advances funeral by funeral

An indispensable hypothesis, even though still far from being a guarantee of success, is however the pursuit of a specific aim, whose lighted beacon, even by initial failures, is not betrayed.

[I do not believe] in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.