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Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

Max Planck

We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.
MAX PLANCK

Health Life Maintain Relative Rest Science Struggle
We are in a position similar to that of a mountaineer who is wandering over uncharted spaces, and never knows whether behind the peak which he sees in front of him and which he tries to scale there may not be another peak still beyond and higher up.
MAX PLANCK

Beyond Position Space
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
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
What seems today inconceivable will appear one day, from a higher stand point, quite simple and harmonious.
MAX PLANCK

Appearance Harmony Quite Simplicity
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
It is never possible to predict a physical occurrence with unlimited precision.
MAX PLANCK

Limitation Possible Prediction
This is one of man’s oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws?
MAX PLANCK

Harmony Human Independence Law Man Nature Old Order Subject
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.
MAX PLANCK

Existence Force Intelligence Mindset Origin Virtue
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
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
I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science.
MAX PLANCK

Noble Science Search Worth
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.
MAX PLANCK

Assumption Existence Future Law Physical Right
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.
MAX PLANCK

Errors Old Progress Science Theory
Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out.
MAX PLANCK

Death Rival Truth
A scientist is happy, not in resting on his attainments but in the steady acquisition of fresh knowledge.
MAX PLANCK

Fresh Happiness Knowledge Science

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

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Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

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