Max Planck

"I regard the fight against world peace as futile. But I regard the fight for world peace as possible and necessary."

"The observation of nature teaches us that the passage of time produces continuous change in the properties of matter, and that no properties remain stable forever."

"Anybody who has learned to think scientifically must see that there is only a very faint light between religion and science."

"Science cannot tell us anything about the meaning and purpose of our existence, but it can show us how foolish and limited all our notions on these matters are."

"The principle of causality has nothing to do with the principle of determinism."

"A genuine struggle for peace is in the offing. The old notion of national sovereignty must give way."

"The greatest achievement in a scientist's life is to discover something completely new and to see its profound implications."

"Man can find meaning in every size of life."

"The goal of science is objective truth, but that does not mean the truth itself is objective."

"Scientific research reveals to us that there is a kind of underlying order in this universe."

"Religion and science are not antagonistic; they move in different domains."

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe in its entirety."

"An important scientific discovery needs both, the creative thinking and the hard work."

"The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."

"Science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

"I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos."

"Energy is matter, and matter is energy, one and the same thing."

"The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities rather than of things or facts."

"I am convinced that the teachers of religion have had to make the same kinds of compromises that the politicians do."

"It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science."

"There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, supported by being sympathetic to experience, can reach them."

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns."

"The atomic researcher realizes that we are face to face with something quite foreign to everyday experience, something that cannot be described in terms of our usual concepts."

"The goal of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to place a limit on infinite error."

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

"Scientific work does not just exist in isolation; it is the continuous interaction with nature."

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

"Anybody who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that there is a spirit manifest in the laws of the universe, a spirit vastly superior to that of man."

"The history of science shows us that our views on the nature of matter keep changing."

"Where the world ceases to be the stage of our personal hopes and desires, where we face it as free human beings admiring, asking and observing, there science begins."