Alexis Carrel Quotes

#1. As to virtue ... it is an act of the will, a habit which increases the quantity, intensity and quality of life. It builds up, strengthens and vivifies personality.

Alexis Carrel

#2. Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.

Alexis Carrel

#3. Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock of inertia.

Alexis Carrel

#4. Prayer, like radium, is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.

Alexis Carrel

#5. When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.

Alexis Carrel

#6. Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive.

Alexis Carrel

#7. A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

Alexis Carrel

#8. Enormous amounts of money are spent for publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men.

Alexis Carrel

#9. More than half of all great remedies known to medical history have come from empiricists ... 'irregulars' ... of no or little scientific training. There is no reason to believe that conditions have essentially changed.

Alexis Carrel

#10. All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.

Alexis Carrel

#11. Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.

Alexis Carrel

#12. All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people.

Alexis Carrel

#13. Those who don't learn to fight worry, die young.

Alexis Carrel

#14. Comforts and syphilis are the greatest enemies of mankind.

Alexis Carrel

#15. There are no watertight compartments in our inmost nature.

Alexis Carrel

#16. In recognition of his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood-vessels and organs.

Alexis Carrel

#17. In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable.

Alexis Carrel

#18. The best way of increasing the [average] intelligence of scientists would be to reduce their number.

Alexis Carrel

#19. The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.

Alexis Carrel

#20. Jesus knows our world. He does not disdain us like the God of Aristotle. We can speak to Him and He answers us. Although He is a person like ourselves, He is God and transcends all things.

Alexis Carrel

#21. Logic never attracts men to the point of carrying them away.

Alexis Carrel

#22. The influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected.

Alexis Carrel

#23. Hard conditions of life are indispensable to bringing out the best in human personality.

Alexis Carrel

#24. The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one's day and every night to examine the results obtained.

Alexis Carrel

#25. Happiness depends on one being exactly fitted to the nature of one's work.

Alexis Carrel

#26. The quality of life is more important than life itself.

Alexis Carrel

#27. Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge.

Alexis Carrel

#28. Prayer is a force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men lifted out of sickness by the power of prayer. It is the only power in the world that overcomes the laws of nature.

Alexis Carrel

#29. The influence of prayer on the human mind and body is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. Its results can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationship.

Alexis Carrel

#30. If the doctor of today does not become the dietician of tomorrow, the dietician of today will become the doctor of tomorrow.

Alexis Carrel

#31. Men grow when inspired by a high purpose, when contemplating vast horizons. The sacrifice of oneself is not very difficult for one burning with the passion for a great adventure.

Alexis Carrel

#32. Patients have been cured almost instantaneously of ... lupus ... ,cancer ... ,ulcers ... , tuberculosis ... In a few seconds, at most a few hours, the symptoms disappear and the anatomic lesions mend. The miracle is characterized by extreme acceleration of the normal process of healing.

Alexis Carrel

#33. The modern city consists of ... dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gasses, torn by the noise ...

Alexis Carrel

#34. To accomplish our destiny it is not enough to merely guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.

Alexis Carrel

#35. Religion brings to man an inner strength, spiritual light, and ineffable peace.

Alexis Carrel

#36. One must train oneself, by small and frequent efforts, to dominate one's feelings.

Alexis Carrel

#37. Scientific civilisation has destroyed the soul of the world.

Alexis Carrel

#38. The cell is immortal. It is merely the fluid in which it floats that degenerates. Renew this fluid at regular intervals, give the cells what they require for nutrition, and as far as we know, the pulsation of life can go on forever.

Alexis Carrel

#39. Prayer is a cry of distress, a demand for help, a hymn of love.

Alexis Carrel

#40. Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.

Alexis Carrel

#41. Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Alexis Carrel

#42. The search for God is indeed, an entirely personal undertaking ... the most audacious adventure that one can dare.

Alexis Carrel

#43. The atmosphere of libraries, lecture rooms and laboratories is dangerous to those who shut themselves up in them too long. It separates us from reality like a fog.

Alexis Carrel

#44. Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.

Alexis Carrel

#45. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind, and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.

Alexis Carrel

#46. Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate ... It supplies us with a flow of sustaining power in our daily lives.

Alexis Carrel

#47. It is faith, and not reason, which impels men to action ... Intelligence is content to point out the road, but never drives us along it.

Alexis Carrel

#48. To progress again, man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor. In order to uncover his true visage he must shatter his own substance with heavy blows of his hammer.

Alexis Carrel

#49. In joy or sorrow, health or sickness, prosperity or the reverse, the effort must still continue. One must rise after every fall and gradually acquire courage, faith, the will to succeed and the capacity to love.

Alexis Carrel

#50. Intelligence is almost useless to the person whose only quality it is.

Alexis Carrel

#51. The secret of life is to be found in life itself, in the full organic, intellectual and spiritual activities of our body.

Alexis Carrel

#52. The love of beauty in its multiple forms is the noblest gift of the human cerebrum.

Alexis Carrel

#53. To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

Alexis Carrel