Considered in itself, the experimental method is nothing but reasoning by whose help we methodically submit our ideas to experience,—the experience o… - Claude Bernard

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 sole happiness.… [A] man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations.

We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.