Top 67 Claude Bernard Quotes
#1. Tout est poison, rien n'est poison, tout est une question de dose. Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of dose.
Claude Bernard
#2. Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of their fellows ... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.
Claude Bernard
#3. Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.
Claude Bernard
#5. Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.
Claude Bernard
#6. True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
Claude Bernard
#7. Hatred is the most clear- sighted, next to genius ...
Claude Bernard
#8. Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.
Claude Bernard
#9. Real science exists, then, only from the moment when a phenomenon is accurately defined as to its nature and rigorously determined in relation to its material conditions, that is, when its law is known. Before that, we have only groping and empiricism.
Claude Bernard
#10. The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.
Claude Bernard
#11. We must keep our freedom of mind, ... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.
Claude Bernard
#12. With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress of the experimental sciences.
Claude Bernard
#13. [Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations.
Claude Bernard
#14. 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.
Claude Bernard
#15. The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.
Claude Bernard
#16. 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.
Claude Bernard
#17. The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
Claude Bernard
#18. Science increases our understanding in proportion as it lowers our pride.
Claude Bernard
#19. The fact that knowledge endlessly recedes as the investigator is about to grasp it is what constitutes at the same time his torment and happiness.
Claude Bernard
#20. It's what we think we know that keeps us from learning.
Claude Bernard
#21. 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.
Claude Bernard
#22. 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.
Claude Bernard
#23. A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,-'Art is myself; science is ourselves. '
Claude Bernard
#24. The true worth of a researcher lies in pursuing what he did not seek in his experiment as well as what he sought.
Claude Bernard
#25. In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.
Claude Bernard
#26. We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
Claude Bernard
#27. All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.
Claude Bernard
#29. The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
Claude Bernard
#31. If I had to define life in a single phrase, I should clearly express my thought of throwing into relief one characteristic which, in my opinion, sharply differentiates biological science. I should say: life is creation.
Claude Bernard
#33. The goal of scientific physicians in their own science ... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
#35. When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.
Claude Bernard
#36. A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.
Claude Bernard
#37. 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.
Claude Bernard
#38. The investigator should have a robust faith - and yet not believe.
Claude Bernard
#40. Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.
Claude Bernard
#41. Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
Claude Bernard
#42. A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
Claude Bernard
#43. Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
#44. Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.
Claude Bernard
#45. The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries.
Claude Bernard
#46. Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.
Claude Bernard
#47. Effects vary with the conditions which bring them to pass, but laws do not vary. Physiological and pathological states are ruled by the same forces; they differ only because of the special conditions under which the vital laws manifest themselves.
Claude Bernard
#48. Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
Claude Bernard
#49. The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.
Claude Bernard
#50. The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.
Claude Bernard
#51. Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.
Claude Bernard
#52. 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.
Claude Bernard
#53. We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.
Claude Bernard
#54. When entering on new ground we must not be afraid to express even risky ideas so as to stimulate research in all directions. As Priestley put it, we must not remain inactive through false modesty based on fear of being mistaken.
Claude Bernard
#56. But while I accept specialization in the practice, I reject it utterly in the theory of science.
Claude Bernard
#57. The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion.
Claude Bernard
#58. The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements.
Claude Bernard
#59. It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.
Claude Bernard
#60. Descriptive anatomy is to physiology what geography is to history, and just as it is not enough to know the typography of a country to understand its history, so also it is not enough to know the anatomy of organs to understand their functions.
Claude Bernard
#61. The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.
Claude Bernard
#62. Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.
Claude Bernard
#63. The eloquence of a scientist is clarity; scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it.
Claude Bernard
#64. Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
Claude Bernard
#65. The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them.
Claude Bernard
#66. In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.
Claude Bernard
#67. A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.
Claude Bernard
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