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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.
Never
Principles
Causal
Men
Imagination
Enrich
Imagine
Addition
Existence
Occasionally
Idea
Principle
Science
Contrary
Cannot
Conditions
Ideas
Events

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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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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 assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.
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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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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.
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Those [scientists] who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.
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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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It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.
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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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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.
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Science advances one funeral at a time.
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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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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.
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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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The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.
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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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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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All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.
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Insight must precede application.
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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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