Max Planck - Knowledge Quotes

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Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of them without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

Max Planck
Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.

Max Planck
Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence — love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.

Max Planck
Under these conditions it is no wonder, that the movement of atheists, which declares religion to be just a deliberate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher Power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but — which is even worse — also any prospects at a better future.

Max Planck
Compared with immeasurably rich, ever young Nature, advanced as man may be in scientific knowledge and insight, he must forever remain the wondering child and must constantly be prepared for new surprises.

Max Planck
A scientist is happy, not in resting on his attainments but in the steady acquisition of fresh knowledge.

Max Planck
Hitherto the principle of causality was universally accepted as an indispensable postulate of scientific research, but now we are told by some physicists that it must be thrown overboard. The fact that such an extraordinary opinion should be expressed in responsible scientific quarters is widely taken to be significant of the all-round unreliability of human knowledge. This indeed is a very serious situation.

Max Planck
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.

Max Planck
Science is not contemplative repose amidst knowledge already gained, but is indefatigable work and an ever progressive development.

Max Planck
Exact science — what wealth of connotation these two words have! They conjure up a vision of a lofty structure, of imperishable slabs of stone firmly joined together, treasure-house of all wisdom, symbol and promise of the coveted goal for a human race thirsting for knowledge, longing for the final revelation of truth.

Max Planck