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.
— Where is Science Going?
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.
Where this quote comes from
Planck wrote this in a piece collected in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, published in English in 1949. He calls experimenters the shock troops of science, then argues that experiments depend on theorists: someone must frame the question before it is posed to nature, and someone must interpret the answer once it is measured.
Source: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1949)
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More from Max Planck
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
— Where is Science Going?
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
— Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.
— The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science
[I do not believe] in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.
— The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science
This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?
— Where is Science Going?