Max Planck
Originated quantum theory with energy quanta
Most quoted
"The quantum theory is a theory of the elementary quanta of the cosmos and the chaos, the light and the darkness, the good and the evil, the life and the death, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the past, the present, and the future, the here and the now, the everywhere and the always, the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknown, the finite and the infinite, the possible and the impossible, the necessary and the contingent, the universal and the particular, the general and the specific, the abstract and the concrete, the simple and the complex, the whole and the part, the one and the many, the same and the different, the identity and the difference, the unity and the multiplicity, the order and the chaos, the harmony and the discord, all things and nothing, being and non-being, existence and non-existence, reality and unreality, truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance, wisdom and folly, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, morality and immorality, ethics and unethics, religion and irreligion, spirituality and materialism, God and atheism, the universe and the void."
— from The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory, 1920
"The quantum theory is a theory of the elementary quanta of the cosmos and the chaos, the light and the darkness, the good and the evil, the life and the death, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the past, the present, and the future, the here and the now, the everywhere and the always, the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknown, the finite and the infinite, the possible and the impossible, the necessary and the contingent, the universal and the particular, the general and the specific, the abstract and the concrete, the simple and the complex, the whole and the part, the one and the many, the same and the different, the identity and the difference, the unity and the multiplicity, the order and the chaos, the harmony and the discord."
— from The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory, 1920
"My original decision to devote myself to science was a direct result of the discovery which has never ceased to fill me with enthusiasm since my early youth - the comprehension of the far from obvious fact that the laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us; that, therefore, pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the latter. In that sense, it is obvious that science cannot be neutral, and cannot be isolated from life."
— from Scientific Autobiography, 1949
All quotes by Max Planck (661)
Truth never triumphs—it stumbles upon the ruins of error.
Physics is an attempt to see the wood for the trees.
The universe seems to be built on a foundation of probabilities.
I can characterize the whole so-called philosophy of mathematics to be an artifical analysis of the copying of these different world-expressions, an analysis which is not very important.
The law of causality cannot be completely and unconditionally valid in all spheres of life.
Modern physics has led us to take a closer view of the structure of matter, and it has shown us that the inner core of this structure is not solid, but is a dynamic flux.
The history of physics is not the history of a steady accumulation of knowledge, but a history of revolutions.
To be a scientist is to remain a seeker, never to rest content with the known.
The older a truth, the deeper it is rooted.
The quantum hypothesis will go down in the history of physics as one of the great advances.
I believe that the motion of the atoms is always ruled by the same laws, even in the smallest possible volumes.
The discomfort caused by the discrepancy between theory and experiment was for me the real mother of the quantum hypothesis.
My original decision to devote myself to science was a direct result of the discovery which has never ceased to fill me with enthusiasm since my early youth - the comprehension of the far from obvious fact that the laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us; that, therefore, pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the latter. In that sense, it is obvious that science cannot be neutral, and cannot be isolated from life.
Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the notion of the reality of the microworld was a philosophical question. Now it is a question of experiment.
The theory of relativity is intimately connected with the theory of space and time. I do not believe that it can be fully understood without a thorough knowledge of the mathematical apparatus involved.
In all my life I have never felt the need to pray. But at the moment when I had to decide whether I should join the party or not, I would have gone to church and prayed if I had known how.
It was not just the Church that resisted me; it was the universities that refused to teach my theory.
The value of a scientific theory is not in its absolute truth, but in its usefulness.
Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.
The physicist's greatest enemy is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.
Contemporaries of Max Planck
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Max Planck (1858–1947).