Claude Bernard
Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.Collection: Science
Art is I; science is we.Collection: Art
Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.Collection: Imagination
It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.Collection: Learning
Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
The investigator should have a robust faith - and yet not believe.
The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.
In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
Experimentation is an active science.
A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
Science does not permit exceptions.
The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing.Collection: Germs
Tout est poison, rien n'est poison, tout est une question de dose. Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of dose.Collection: Drug
When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.Collection: Acceptance
We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.Collection: Knowledge
Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.Collection: Learning
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledgeCollection: Men
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.Collection: Science
Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.Collection: Discovery
All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.Collection: Environment
Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results,only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim.Collection: Science
True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.Collection: Ignorance
Feeling alone guides the mind.Collection: Passion
Art is 'I'; science is 'we'.Collection: Witty
Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.Collection: Science
It has often been said that, to make discoveries, one must be ignorant. This opinion, mistaken in itself, nevertheless conceals a truth. It means that it is better to know nothing than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek, neglecting meanwhile everything that fails to agree with them.Collection: Knowledge
Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.Collection: Facts
Descriptive anatomy is to physiology what geography is to history, and just as it is not enough to know the typography of a country to understand its history, so also it is not enough to know the anatomy of organs to understand their functions.Collection: Country
We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.Collection: Nature
We must keep our freedom of mind, ... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.Collection: Nature
The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.Collection: Science
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.Collection: Pride
Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.Collection: Ideas
To be worthy of the name, an experimenter must be at once theorist and practitioner. While he must completely master the art of establishing experimental facts, which are the materials of science, he must also clearly understand the scientific principles which guide his reasoning through the varied experimental study of natural phenomena. We cannot separate these two things: head and hand. An able hand, without a head to direct it, is a blind tool; the head is powerless without its executive hand.Collection: Art
A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.Collection: Science
The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.Collection: Believe
First causes are outside the realm of science.Collection: Science
The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.Collection: Long
I do not ... reject the use of statistics in medicine, but I condemn not trying to get beyond them and believing in statistics as the foundation of medical science. ... Statistics ... apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still [uncertain or] indeterminate. ... There will always be some indeterminism ... in all the sciences, and more in medicine than in any other. But man's intellectual conquest consists in lessening and driving back indeterminism in proportion as he gains ground for determinism by the help of the experimental method.Collection: Believe
In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.Collection: Moving
We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.Collection: Science
The eloquence of a scientist is clarity; scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it.Collection: Imagination
When entering on new ground we must not be afraid to express even risky ideas so as to stimulate research in all directions. As Priestley put it, we must not remain inactive through false modesty based on fear of being mistaken.Collection: Science
Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and their sole happiness. Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery which is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.Collection: Knowledge
Hatred is the most clear- sighted, next to genius.Collection: Hatred
Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.Collection: Would Be
Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.Collection: Science
The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.Collection: Freedom