Max Planck Quotes

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy.

Physics tells us observations can't be predicted absolutely. Rather, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability.

I like relativity and quantum theories because I don't understand them and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can't settle, refusing to sit still and be measured; and as if the atom were an impulsive thing always changing its mind.

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.

If we have an atom that is in an excited state and so is going to emit a photon, we cannot say when it will emit the photon. It has a certain amplitude to emit the photon at any time, and we can predict only a probability for emission; we cannot predict the future exactly.

God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.

A lot of things can't be modeled very well.

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.

There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.

The uncertainty relation does not refer to the past; if the velocity of the electron is at first known and the position then exactly measured, the position for times previous to the measurement may be calculated.

While the finish given to our picture of the world by the theory of relativity has already been absorbed into the general scientific consciousness, this has scarcely occurred to the same extent with those aspects of the general problem of knowledge which have been elucidated by the quantum theory.

The future is inherently uncertain.

All kinds of physical considerations become senseless when we try to apply them to distances smaller than 10 -13 centimeter.

The uncertainty principle refers to the degree of indeterminateness in the possible present knowledge of the simultaneous values of various quantities with which the quantum theory deals; it does not restrict, for example, the exactness of a position measurement alone or a velocity measurement alone.

No one can escape the iron rule that once you make a forecast, you know you're going to be wrong; you just don't know when and in which direction!

Sometimes you hit the ball on target and sometimes you don't.

Nothing is definite, nothing is finished, nothing is determined.

The future is uncertain, and therefore I can't predict it.

So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.