Louis Pasteur Quotes - Page 4

In the fields of observation chance favors only those minds which are prepared.

To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.

If science has no country, the scientist should have one, and ascribe to it the influence which his works may have in this world.

How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter?

If perchance you should falter during the journey, a hand would be there to support you. If that should be wanting, God, who alone could take that hand from you, would Himself accomplish its work.

Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need decisive experimental proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to interpret the gathered observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the experiment.

What did you do today to receive your instruction?

If you suppress laboratories, physical science will be stricken with barrenness and death.

... by chance you will say, but chance only favors the mind which is prepared.

Science proceeds by successive answers to questions more and more subtle, coming nearer and nearer to the very essence of phenomena.

I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.

Virulence appears in a new light which cannot but be alarming to humanity; unless nature, in her evolution down the ages (an evolution which, as we now know, has been going on for millions, nay, hundreds of millions of years), has finally exhausted all the possibilities of producing virulent or contagious diseases - which does not seem very likely.

After death, life reappears in a different form and with different laws. It is inscribed in the laws of the permanence of life on the surface of the earth and everything that has been a plant and an animal will be destroyed and transformed into a gaseous, volatile and mineral substance.

Nothing is lost and nothing is created in the operations of art as those of nature.

Analogy cannot serve as proof.

Outsidetheir laboratories, thephysicianand chemist are soldiers without arms on the field of battle.

My opinion - nay more, my conviction - is that, in the present state of science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera; and it would be impossible for you to contradict me, for my experiments all stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera.

Science belongs to no one country.

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are sciences and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

The nights seem to me too long... I am often scolded by Madame Pasteur, but I tell her I shall lead her to fame.

As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts.

Work usually follows will.

These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite.

Chance favors those who are prepared.

The universe is an asymmetrical entity. I am inclined to believe that life as it is manifested to us must be a function of the asymmetry of the universe or of the consequence of this fact. The universe is asymmetrical; for if one placed the entire set of bodies that compose the solar system, each moving in its own way, before a mirror, the image shown would not be superimposable on the reality.