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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.

Max Planck

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.
MAX PLANCK

Answer Born Death Greatness Let Go Science
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.
MAX PLANCK

Betrayal Failure Goal Light Pursuit Success
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer.
MAX PLANCK

Experiment Measurement Nature Question Record 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.
MAX PLANCK

Culture Goal People Place Respect Time
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.
MAX PLANCK

Conscience High Law Science
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.
MAX PLANCK

Art Equality Impossible Religion Science Simplicity
Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.
MAX PLANCK

Consciousness Ego Human
It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.
MAX PLANCK

Accident Age Deep Greatness Religious Soul Thinking
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.
MAX PLANCK

Condition Ideas Imagination Man New Occasion
The pioneer scientist must have “a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination.”
MAX PLANCK

Artist Creation Ideas Imagination Intuition Science
The spectral density of black body radiation; represents something absolute, and since the search for the absolutes has always appeared to me to be the highest form of research, I applied myself vigorously to its solution.
MAX PLANCK

Black Myself Representation Research Search Solution
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.
MAX PLANCK

Happiness Himself Possession Rich Seek Truth
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.
MAX PLANCK

Discover Knowledge Practice Pursuit Science View
A new truth always has to conend with many difficulties. If it were not so, it would have been discovered much sooner.
MAX PLANCK

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

Fragment Nature Vast World
Scientific work will never stop, and it would be terrible if it did. If there were no more problems, you would put your hands in your pockets and your head on a pillow and would work no more. In science rest is stagnation, rest is death.
MAX PLANCK

Death Hands Science Stop Terrible Work

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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