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

Max Planck

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness.
MAX PLANCK

Conscious Fundamental Myself Regard
The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.
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Fragment Nature Vast World
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.
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Creativity Death Important Innovation Rival Science Win
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.
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Discover Knowledge Practice Pursuit Science View
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.
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Constitution Goal Human Intelligence Light Possible Quick
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.
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Errors Old Progress Science Theory
Every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.
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Face Knowledge Live Mystery Ourselves
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
No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.
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Day Happiness heavy Lost Man
In all my research I have never come across matter. To me the term matter implies a bundle of energy which is given form by an intelligent spirit.
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Energy Intelligence Research Science Spirit
Experimenters are the shock troops of science.
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Experiment Science
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.
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Answer Born Death Greatness Let Go Science
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.
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Happiness Himself Possession Rich Seek Truth
The quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality.
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Expression Law Science
It is never possible to predict a physical occurrence with unlimited precision.
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Limitation Possible Prediction
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.
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Health Life Maintain Relative Rest Science Struggle
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.
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Condition Ideas Imagination Man New Occasion
There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.
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Oneself Reality Religion Science
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.
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Independent Invention Law Nature Order Reality World
Those scientists who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.
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Entertainment Ideas Rich Science Thinking
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
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.’
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Engagement Kind Science Serious Temple Word Work Writing
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.
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Existence Force Origin Science Virtue
Science advances one funeral at a time.
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Death Funeral One Liner Science Time
The pioneer scientist must have “a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination.”
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Artist Creation Ideas Imagination Intuition Science
Insight must precede application.
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Action Application Knowledge One Liner Wisdom
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

Death Generation Light Science Success Truth

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

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

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