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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

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Max Planck
Age: 89 †
Born: 1858
Born: April 23
Died: 1947
Died: December 4
Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Planck
M.
Idea
Principle
Science
Contrary
Cannot
Conditions
Ideas
Events
Never
Principles
Causal
Men
Imagination
Enrich
Imagine
Addition
Existence
Occasionally

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Science advances funeral by funeral
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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.
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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.
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All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.
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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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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.
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Those [scientists] who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.
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Science advances one funeral at a time.
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What seems today inconceivable will appear one day, from a higher stand point, quite simple and harmonious.
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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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The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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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Insight must precede application.
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There can never be any real opposition between religion and science for the one is the complement of the other.
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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.
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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.
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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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