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I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Max Planck

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
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
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.
MAX PLANCK

Independent Invention Law Nature Order Reality World
It is never possible to predict a physical occurrence with unlimited precision.
MAX PLANCK

Limitation Possible Prediction
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
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
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
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.’
MAX PLANCK

Engagement Kind Science Serious Temple Word Work Writing
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
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
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
Experimenters are the shock troops of science.
MAX PLANCK

Experiment 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 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
Those scientists who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.
MAX PLANCK

Entertainment Ideas Rich Science Thinking
Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out.
MAX PLANCK

Death Rival Truth

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

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I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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