I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness
Spoken byMax Planck1858–1947 · German theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1918
Planck’s answer in an interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, printed as “Interviews with Great Scientists. VI.—Max Planck” in The Observer (London), 25 January 1931, p. 17. Editors who checked the newspaper report the wording as verbatim. It is reported interview speech, not a passage from Planck’s own writings.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness” Max Planck, interviewed by J. W. N. Sullivan, “Interviews with Great Scientists. VI.—Max Planck,” The Observer (London), 25 January 1931, p. 17.
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Provenance
The source
Article
“Interviews with Great Scientists. VI.—Max Planck”
Published
The Observer (London), 25 January 1931, p. 17
Interviewer
J. W. N. Sullivan (1886–1937), English science writer
Form
Reported speech in an English-language newspaper interview
“Do you think that consciousness can be explained in terms of matter and its laws?” “No. I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Sullivan’s question and Planck’s reply
The question-and-answer text is as transcribed from the 1931 page by a Wikiquote editor who checked the original. Popular versions drop Sullivan’s question and Planck’s opening “No.”
Wikiquote lists the full four-sentence wording in its sourced Quotes section, citing The Observer (London), 25 January 1931, p. 17 — Wikiquote: Max Planck ↗
Editors who checked the 1931 page (one through ProQuest) report the line verbatim in “Interviews With Great Scientists. VI. – Max Planck,” the interview by J. W. N. Sullivan, as Planck’s answer to a question about whether consciousness can be explained in terms of matter — Wikiquote talk page ↗
The wording first appeared in The Observer on 25 January 1931. Under the rule for US publications from 1931 onward, the newspaper text is treated as still in copyright. The text is Sullivan’s English write-up of the interview, so rights sit with the newspaper and the writer’s estate, not with Planck. Quoting this short passage with attribution is ordinary fair use.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets mixed up
The line is real, but three things often go wrong: people argue over whose words it is, they merge it with a different and unproven Planck passage, or they confuse it with a similar line by Schrödinger.
✕
Authorship of the wordingJ. W. N. Sullivan, the interviewer Reported speech
In 2017 a Wikiquote editor deleted the line as “false.” The editor argued that the text was written by Sullivan, not Planck, and clashes with Planck’s lifelong realism. Two other editors then checked the 1931 page, found it verbatim as Planck’s reply and restored it (Wikiquote talk page ↗). The fair summary: Planck’s answer as Sullivan reported it.
✕
A different Planck passageThe “matrix of all matter” speech Separate source
A separate passage about a “conscious and intelligent Mind” being “the matrix of all matter” is credited to a 1944 speech in Florence. Wikiquote cites it to an archive typescript, as quoted via a Gregg Braden book (Wikiquote: Max Planck ↗). It has nothing to do with the 1931 Observer interview and should not be merged with it.
✕
A similar line by someone elseErwin Schrödinger Neighbor quote
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental” is Schrödinger’s, cited to Walter Moore’s biography of him. The two lines are quoted side by side, for example in a 2016 Physics Today letter (PDF ↗), which makes the two physicists easy to mix up.
✓The words are Max Planck’s reply to J. W. N. Sullivan, printed in The Observer on 25 January 1931, p. 17 (Wikiquote ↗). This is an English newspaper record of an interview, not a sentence from Planck’s own books.
Context
Why it mattered
In 1930–31 the science writer J. W. N. Sullivan interviewed leading scientists and thinkers for The Observer, and later reprinted the series in Contemporary Mind (1934) (Wikipedia ↗). As transcribed by a Wikiquote editor who checked the page, Sullivan opens the Planck instalment by noting that Planck answered every question “with a quite remarkable lack of hesitation” (Wikiquote talk ↗).
Pulled out of the interview, the four sentences became a standard text for “consciousness-first” writers. They are still cited that way, for example in a 2016 Physics Today letter defending consciousness-based readings of quantum physics (PDF ↗).
We cannot get behind consciousness.
Does it fit Planck’s other views?
Not everyone reads the line as metaphysical idealism. The Wikiquote editor who objected to it pointed out that Planck elsewhere insisted on an outside world independent of the observer. The editor argued that in context “consciousness” points toward a greater mind behind the scheme of the world (Wikiquote talk ↗). That is a question of interpretation. It does not change where the words were printed.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1858–1947 · German theoretical physicist, originator of quantum theory
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was the German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta founded quantum theory. It won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. He also lectured and wrote widely on the philosophy of science and religion, and in January 1931 The Observer printed his answers to the British science writer J. W. N. Sullivan on causality, free will and the place of consciousness.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
J. W. N. Sullivan, “Interviews with Great Scientists. VI.—Max Planck,” The Observer (London), 25 January 1931, 17.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness’?” Last verified 3 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-regard-consciousness-as-fundamental-i-regard-matter-as/