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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The goal is nothing other than the coherence and completeness of the system not only in respect of all details, but also in respect of all physicists of all places, all times, all peoples, and all cultures.

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

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

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

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.

Insight must precede application.

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.’

The highest court is in the end one’s own conscience and conviction-that goes for you and for Einstein and every other physicist-and before any science there is first of all belief. For me, it is belief in a complete lawfulness in everything that happens.

Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out.