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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

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

Assumption Determination Essence Foundation
Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out.
MAX PLANCK

Death Rival Truth
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
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
No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.
MAX PLANCK

Day Happiness heavy Lost Man
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
Every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.
MAX PLANCK

Face Knowledge Live Mystery Ourselves
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
Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.
MAX PLANCK

Experiment Imagination Knowledge Poetry
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
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.
MAX PLANCK

Constitution Goal Human Intelligence Light Possible Quick
There is no matter as such—mind is the matrix of all matter.
MAX PLANCK

Mindset Science
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.
MAX PLANCK

Mystery Nature Ourselves Science Try
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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