69+ Max Planck Quotes On Consciousness, Quantum Theory And Physics

Max Planck was a German theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential physicists of the 20th century. He is known for his work in quantum theory and is credited with the discovery of energy quanta, which led to the development of quantum mechanics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for his work in theoretical physics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Max Planck on consciousness, quantum theory, physics.

Top 10 Max Planck Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.'
3. 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.
4. There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.
5. Every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.
6. 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.
7. The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.
8. An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.
9. There is no matter as such—mind is the matrix of all matter.
10. It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.

Max Planck Short Quotes

• No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.
• Insight must precede application.
• All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.
• Science advances funeral by funeral
• Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.
• Experimenters are the shock troops of science.
• Science advances one funeral at a time.

Max Planck Quotes About Consciousness

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

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness. — Max Planck

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness. — Max Planck

Max Planck Quotes About Physics

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

It is never possible to predict a physical occurrence with unlimited precision. — Max Planck

Physical changes take place continuously, while chemical changes take place discontinuously. Physics deals chiefly with continuous varying quantities, while chemistry deals chiefly with whole numbers. — Max Planck

Max Planck Quotes About Scientific

A new 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

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry. — Max Planck

New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment. — Max Planck

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. — Max Planck

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

A new scientific truth is usually not propagated in such a way that opponents become convinced and discard their previous views. No, the adversaries eventually die off, and the upcoming generation is familiarised anew with the truth. — Max Planck

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

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing 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

Max Planck Quotes About 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

Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp. — Max Planck

The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature. — Max Planck

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

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

Those [scientists] who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas. — Max Planck

Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never-relaxing crusade against skepticism and dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and will always be, 'On to God.' — Max Planck

Both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, and to the latter the goal of every thought process. To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view. — Max Planck

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

The quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality. — Max Planck

Max Planck Quotes About Truth

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

A new truth always has to conend with many difficulties. If it were not so, it would have been discovered much sooner. — Max Planck

Truth never triumphs-its opponents just die out. — Max Planck

Max Planck Famous Quotes And Sayings

The pioneer scientist must have "a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination." — Max Planck

Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence-love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being. — Max Planck

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

What seems today inconceivable will appear one day, from a higher stand point, quite simple and harmonious. — Max Planck

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

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

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

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science. — Max Planck

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

Nature prefers the more probable states to the less probable because in nature processes take place in the direction of greater probability. Heat goes from a body at higher temperature to a body at lower temperature because the state of equal temperature distribution is more probable than a state of unequal temperature distribution. — Max Planck

The Theory of Relativity confers an absolute meaning on a magnitude which in classical theory has only a relative significance: the velocity of light. The velocity of light is to the Theory of Relativity as the elementary quantum of action is to the Quantum Theory: it is its absolute core. — Max Planck

The worth of a new idea is invariably determined, not by the degree of its intuitiveness-which incidentally, is to a major extent a matter of experience and habit-but by the scope and accuracy of the individual laws to the discovery of which it eventually leads. — Max Planck

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

The history of all times and nations teaches us that exactly in the naïve, unshakable belief, furnished by religion in active life of believers, originate the most intense motives for the most significant creative performance, not only in the field of arts and sciences but also in politics. — 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

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

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

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. — Max Planck

Farsighted theologians are now working to mine the eternal metal from the teachings of Jesus and to forge it for all time. — Max Planck

Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself... We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life. 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

What led me to my science and what fascinated me from a young age was the, by no means self-evident, fact that our laws of thought agree with the regularities found in the succession of impressions we receive from the external world, that it is thus possible for the human being to gain enlightenment regarding these regularities by means of pure thought — Max Planck

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls — Max Planck

The whole strenuous intellectual work of an industrious research worker would appear, after all, in vain and hopeless, if he were not occasionally through some striking facts to find that he had, at the end of all his criss-cross journeys, at last accomplished at least one step which was conclusively nearer the truth. — Max Planck

I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science. — Max Planck

Hitherto the principle of causality was universally accepted as an indispensable postulate of scientific research, but now we are told by some physicists that it must be thrown overboard. The fact that such an extraordinary opinion should be expressed in responsible scientific quarters is widely taken to be significant of the all-round unreliability of human knowledge. This indeed is a very serious situation. — Max Planck

Life Lessons by Max Planck

1. Max Planck's work in quantum mechanics showed that energy is released in discrete packets, which revolutionized the way we understand the physical world.
2. Planck's work also demonstrated the importance of questioning established theories and pursuing new ideas, even if they seem to contradict accepted wisdom.
3. He also showed the importance of hard work and perseverance, as his breakthroughs were the result of years of painstaking research and experimentation.