Max Planck Quotes

It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry, and it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.

The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the experimental proof for the interdependence of the composition and properties of chemical compounds resulted in the theory that they are mutually related, so that like composition governs like properties, and conversely.

The organic material, as the laws of chemistry state, can neither be created nor destroyed.

By recognizing that the chemical atom is composed of single separable electric quanta, humanity has taken a great step forward in the investigation of the natural world.

Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it.

You have to look at how chemistry develops.

The chemist, whose science is immediately concerned with the combinations of atoms, has rarely found it necessary to discuss their shapes, and gives them no particular forms in his diagrams. That does not mean that the shapes are unimportant, but rather that the older methods could not define them.

Chemistry is a class you take in high school or college, where you figure out two plus two is 10, or something.

There's nothing colder than chemistry.

Chemistry is the melodies you can play on vibrating strings.

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

With this in mind, for some twenty years I have set myself as my particular task the experimental investigation of the connexion between change in the structure and change in the spectra of chemical atoms.

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.

The discovery of deuterium and the marked differences in the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen and deuterium, together with an efficient method for the separation of these isotopes, have opened an interesting field of research in several of the major branches of science.

Chemistry is good for fun - it's like baseball. It has its role for small children, but I can't see an adult being concerned with it.

I do not want chemistry to degenerate into a religion; I do not want the chemist to believe in the existence of atoms as the Christian believes in the existence of Christ in the communion wafer.

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [Chemistry / Physics]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem…. the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

The main thread of my work is structure property relations and materials. If you have certain atoms, why do they attract each other? Why do they make compounds? Why do they do what they do?

I'm a science geek. I even have a T-shirt with a glow-in-the-dark chart of the periodic elements.

Chemistry is not torture but instead the amazing and beautiful science of stuff, and if you give it a chance, it will not only blow your mind but also give you a deeper understanding of your world.

I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.

The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.

Chemistry is like an indefinable thing. When it comes to people playing your best friend or your parents or anything like that, there's always different kind of element to chemistry.

I do not know if I am mistaken, but it seems that one can obtain more truths, important to Humanity, from Chemistry than from any other Science.