Quotes from Claude Bernard

All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.

Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.

A modern poet has characterized the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I: Science is We.

If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation.

Indeed, proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.

Science repulses the indefinite.

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active 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.

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.

Science does not permit exceptions.

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.

It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.

Experimentation is an active science.

Those who have an excessive faith in their ideas are not well fitted to make discoveries.

The investigator should have a robust faith - and yet not believe.

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.

Love is the greatest Joy of Discovery one can feel!

The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.

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.

It's what we think we know that keeps us from learning.

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.

It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.

The true worth of a researcher lies in pursuing what he did not seek in his experiment as well as what he sought.