Louis Pasteur Quotes

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.

God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed.

Great problems are now being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000 centuries ago; the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a God unnecessary: such are some of the questions that humanity discusses nowadays.

Comprenez-vous maintenant le lien qui existe entre la question des générations spontanées et ces grands problèmes que j'ai énumérés en commençant? Mais, messieurs, dans un pareil sujet, assez de poésie comme cela, assez de fantaisie et de solutions instinctives; il est temps que la science, la vraie méthode reprenne ses droits et les exerce. Il n'y a ici ni religion, ni philosophie, ni athéisme, ni matérialisme, ni spiritualisme qui tienne. Je pourrais même ajouter : Comme savant, peu m'importe. C'est une question de fait; je l'ai abordée sans idée préconçue, aussi prêt à déclarer, si l'expérience m'en avait imposé l'aveu, qu'il existe des générations spontanées, que je suis persuadé aujourd'hui que ceux qui les affirment ont un bandeau sur les veux.

The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman.

You say that, in the present state of science, it is wiser to have no opinion: well, I have an opinion, not a sentimental one, but a rational one, having acquired a right to it by twenty years of assiduous labour, and it would be wise in every impartial mind to share it. 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. What is then your judgment on my experiments? Have I not a hundred times placed organic matter in contact with pure air in the best conditions for it to produce life spontaneously? Have I not practised on these organic materia which are most favourable, according to all accounts, to the genesis of spontaneity, such as blood, urine, and grape juice? How is it that you do not see the essential difference between my opponents and myself? Not only have I contradicted, proof in hand, every one of their assertions, while they have never dared to seriously contradict one of mine, but, for them, every cause of error benefits their opinion. For me, affirming as I do that there are no spontaneous fermentations, I am bound to eliminate every cause of error, every perturbing influence, I can maintain my results only by means of most irreproachable experiments; their opinions, on the contrary, profit by every insufficient experiment and that is where they find their support.

I am on the verge of mysteries, and the veil which covers them is getting thinner and thinner. The night seems to me too long....Life as manifested to us is a function of the asymmetry of the universe. ...The universe is asymmetrical; for, if all the bodies in motion which compose the solar system were placed before a glass, the image in it could not be superimposed upon the reality....Terrestrial magnetism...the opposition between positive and negative electricity, are but resultants of asymmetrical actions and movements....Life is dominated by asymmetrical actions . I can even imagine that all living species are primordially in their structure, in their external forms, functions of cosmic asymmetry.

Fortune favors the prepared mind

There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.

Religion has no more place in science than science has in religion.

A little science estranges men from God, but much science leads them back to Him.

Science brings men nearer to God.

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.