Quotations by Max Planck

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarised with the ideas from the beginning.
(New York 1949).

If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

His name stands magnificently over the portal of classical physics, and we can say this of him; by his birth James Clerk Maxwell belongs to Edinburgh, by his personality he belongs to Cambridge, by his work he belongs to the whole world.

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.

JOC/EFR April 2011

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