black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

Max Planck

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

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

Limitation Possible Prediction
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
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
Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.
MAX PLANCK

Law Religion Science
Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.
MAX PLANCK

Consciousness Ego Human
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
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
No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.
MAX PLANCK

Day Happiness heavy Lost Man
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
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
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.
MAX PLANCK

Existence Force Origin Science Virtue
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
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
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
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
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
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
Experimenters are the shock troops of science.
MAX PLANCK

Experiment Science
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
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
Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out.
MAX PLANCK

Death Rival Truth
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

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Max Planck Quotes