Max Planck

I had to sacrifice the continuity of energy to save the second law of thermodynamics.

I am convinced that the world is governed by laws of a mathematical nature.

A scientist must be a man of faith, not in the sense of a believer in dogma, but in the sense of a man who believes in the possibility of discovering new truths.

The quantum of action, as I called it, was a purely formal assumption and I really did not think much about it.

My Führer! I am most deeply shaken by the message that my son Erwin has been sentenced to death by the People's Court. The acknowledgement for my achievements in service of our fatherland, which you, my Führer, have expressed towards me in repeated and most honouring way, makes me confident that you will lend your ear to an imploring 87-year old. As the gratitude of the German people for my life's work, which has become an everlasting intellectual wealth of Germany, I am pleading for my son's life.

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.

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.

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.

I consider the consciousness as fundamental. I consider matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

The highest task of physics is to arrive at the knowledge of the human mind.

The quantum hypothesis will never be overthrown.

There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.

The true pioneer is a man who, if necessary, is prepared to go into the wilderness alone, without anyone following him.

When we consider the development of science, we cannot help noticing that it is in many places the work of individuals who, in opposition to the general current of their time, have succeeded in imposing their views on the scientific world.

The quantum theory has done a great deal for physics, but it has not made it any easier to understand.

The greatest joy of a scientist is to be able to communicate his ideas to others.

The most important task of science is to liberate man from the illusion that he is the center of the world.

There are no contradictions in nature. There are only contradictions in the human mind.

The man who has had a spiritual awakening is a man of courage.

The highest goal of all science is to understand the human mind.