Quotes & Sayings About Pasteur

Analogy cannot serve as proof. — Louis Pasteur

We may regard the cell quite apart from its familiar morphological aspects, and contemplate its constitution from the purely chemical standpoint. We are obliged to adopt the view, that the protoplasm is equipped with certain atomic groups, whose function especially consists in fixing to themselves food-stuffs, of importance to the cell-life. Adopting the nomenclature of organic chemistry, these groups may be designated side-chains. We may assume that the protoplasm consists of a special executive centre (Leistungs-centrum) in connection with which are nutritive side-chains... The relationship of the corresponding groups, i.e., those of the food-stuff, and those of the cell, must be specific. They must be adapted to one another, as, e.g., male and female screw (Pasteur), or as lock and key (E. Fischer). — Paul R. Ehrlich

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

To bring one's self to believe in a truth that has just dawned upon one is the first step towards progress; to persuade others is the second. — Louis Pasteur

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

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of inventions. — Louis Pasteur

If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake," he said. "Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister." Freedom was a foundation for creativity. — Walter Isaacson

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

Pasteur himself was absolutely fearless. Anxious to secure a sample of saliva straight from the jaws of a rabid dog, I once saw him with the glass tube held between his lips draw a few drops of the deadly saliva from the mouth of a rabid bull-dog, held on the table by two assistants, their hands protected by leather gloves. — Axel Munthe

Pasteur originally conceived the idea of germs and of destroying them. Although this started as a personal thing, it has mushroomed into DDT, killing beetles and worms, resulting in food contamination, much sickness, and trouble. Although he is regarded as hero by modern medicine, Pasteur will be treated in much the same way as a warmonger when he is judged in the spiritual world. — Michio Kushi

Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse
and without examining evidence which their "common sense" told them was impossible. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the below things. They are the ones who gave us one of the most beautiful words in our language, the word enthusiasm. — Louis Pasteur

When I approach a child he inspires in me two sentiments tenderness for what he is and respect for what he may become. — Louis Pasteur

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. — Louis Pasteur

Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. — Louis Pasteur

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world. — Louis Pasteur

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? — Louis Pasteur

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. — Louis Pasteur

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

Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries — Louis Pasteur

If you could sit down with Jesus, you wouldn't need anybody else. He could answer all of your questions. Instead of Einstein and Louis Pasteur and Madame Curry, you could just have Jesus and he could answer for all of them. — Carol Alt

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. — Louis Pasteur

Our only consolation, as we feel our own strength failing us, is to feel that we may help those who come after us to do more and to do better than ourselves, fixing their eyes as they can on the great horizons of which we only had a glimpse," pronounced Pasteur, with characteristic gallantry. Many — Bill Wasik

In regard to the aetiology of infectious diseases we must abandon the notions conceived in time of Koch, Ehrlich and Pasteur on the 'pathogenic' nature of the microorganisms of external and internal media. In the full sense of the word it is not the bacteria themselves that are pathogenic, but those physiological correlations which exist in the given organism at a particular moment and which are organically connected with the disturbances in its regulative systems and nervous mechanisms. There are no special 'pathogenic' microbes in nature; there are, however, no end of factors that promote susceptibility in a normally resistant subject, and vice versa. — Arshavir Ter Hovannessian

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

Chance favors those who are prepared. — Louis Pasteur

When one works and imagines and dreams of nothing else than the search for answers that God has posed, it is difficult to be so still. — Louis Pasteur

To know how to wonder and question is the first step of the mind toward discovery. — Louis Pasteur

There is a time in every man's life when he looks to his God, when he looks at his life, when he wonders how he will be remembered. — Louis Pasteur

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. — Louis Pasteur

Yet had Fleming not possessed immense knowledge and an unremitting gift of observation he might not have observed the effect of the hyssop mould. 'Fortune,' remarked Pasteur, 'favors the prepared mind. — Andre Maurois

Who have our fighters been?" Calvin asked. "Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs Whatsit said. Mrs Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." "Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why, of course, Jesus!" "Of course!" Mrs Whatsit said. "Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They've been lights for us to see by." "Leonardo da Vinci?" Calvin suggested tentatively. "And Michelangelo?" "And Shakespeare," Charles Wallace called out, "and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!" Now Calvin's voice rang with confidence. "And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis! — Madeleine L'Engle

But when it has been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic property of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen, or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles. Upon this principle I have based a practice. — Joseph Lister

I prefer not to starve, to live by the practice of medicine, which combines the best features of both science and philosophy with that imponderable and enlightening element, disease, unknown in its normality to either. But, like Pasteur, when he was young, or anyone else who has something to do, I wish I had more money for my literary experiments.
William Carlos Williams, c. 1931 — William Carlos Williams

Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment. — Louis Pasteur

Pasteur will be celebrated almost as a God-like figure. This is when the moon completes her great cycle, but by other rumors, he shall be dishonored. — Nostradamus

I give them experiments and they respond with speeches. — Louis Pasteur

In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared. — Louis Pasteur

Cultivate your curiosity. Keep it sharp and always working. Consider curiosity your life preserver, your willingness to try something new. Second, enlarge your enthusiasm to include the pursuit to excellence, following every task through to completion. Third, make the law of averages work for you. By budgeting your time more carefully than most people you can make more time available. Does the combination of curiosity, enthusiasm, and the law of averages guarantee success Indeed it does not ... Success in the final analysis always involves luck or the element of chance. Louis Pasteur grasped this well when he said that chance favors the prepared mind. — John Hanley Jr.

A blanket could be used to cure the common cold. I mean, come on it's just common sense. A blanket is warm, and if a cold is what it's named, then a blanket would transform a cold into some nameless nonentity. Take that, Louis Pasteur. — Jarod Kintz

Whatever your career may be, do not let yourselves become tainted by a deprecating and barren scepticism, do not let yourselves be discouraged by the sadness of certain hours which pass over nations. Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries. Say to yourselves first : ' What have I done for my instruction ? ' and , as you gradually advance, 'What have I done for my country?' until the time comes when you may have the immense happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some way to the progress and to the good of humanity. But, whether our efforts are or not favoured by life, let us be able to say, when we come near the great goal, ' I have done what I could — Louis Pasteur

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own. — Carl Sandburg

Will opens the door to success, both brilliant and happy. — Louis Pasteur

Luck favors the prepared." -Louis Pasteur . . . but actually for me, Edna from The Incredibles. At least I admitted it. — Mike Gullickson

You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity. — Louis Pasteur

I have the faith of a Breton peasant and by the time I die I hope to have the faith of a Breton peasant's wife. — Louis Pasteur

Happy is he who bears a god within. — Louis Pasteur

Could I but know all, I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman — Louis Pasteur

One must work; one must work. I have done what I could. — Louis Pasteur

Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself it is not an awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it, everything is fallible; it always has the last word. — Louis Pasteur

My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute. — William S. Burroughs

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. — Louis Pasteur

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. — Louis Pasteur

Life comes only from life. — Louis Pasteur

When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul. — Louis Pasteur

It is not the germs we need worry about. It is our inner terrain. — Louis Pasteur

Chance favours the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur

It is a matter of fact; I approached without a preconceived idea, too ready to declare, if the experiment had imposed upon me the confession, that there was a spontaneous generation, of
which I am convinced today that those who assure it are blindfolded. — Louis Pasteur

Change only favours minds that are diligently looking and preparing for discovery. — Louis Pasteur

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

Herrmann Pidoux and Armand Trousseau stated 'Disease exists within us, because of us, and through us', Pasteur did not entirely disagree, 'This is true for certain diseases', he wrote cautiously, only to add immediately: 'I do not think that it is true for all of them'. — Louis Pasteur

The greatest malfunction of spirit is to believe things. — Louis Pasteur

Intuition is given only to him who has undergone long preparation to receive it.
-Louis Pasteur — Mitch Kynock

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. — Louis Pasteur

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism. — Louis Pasteur

In an age of explosive development in the realm of medical technology, it is unnerving to find that the discoveries of Salk, Sabin, and even Pasteur remain irrelevant to much of humanity. — Paul Farmer

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. — Louis Pasteur

I propose to provide proof ... that just as always an alcoholic ferment, the yeast of beer, is found where sugar is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid, so always a special ferment, a lactic yeast, is found where sugar is transformed into lactic acid. And, furthermore, when any plastic nitrogenated substance is able to transform sugar into that acid, the reason is that it is a suitable nutrient for the growth of the [lactic] ferment. — Louis Pasteur

The role of the infinitely small in nature is infinitely great. — Louis Pasteur

Science and peace will triumph over ignorance and war. — Louis Pasteur

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

In good philosophy, the word cause ought to be reserved to the single Divine impulse that has formed the universe. — Louis Pasteur

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. — Louis Pasteur

Lister saw the vast importance of the discoveries of Pasteur. He saw it because he was watching on the heights, and he was watching there alone. — Thomas Clifford Allbutt

The world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure like the Pasteur serum for rabies. — Alan Watts

Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory. — Louis Pasteur

Wine is the healthiest and most health-giving of drinks. — Louis Pasteur

Science knows no country because it is the light that iluminates the world — Louis Pasteur

The greatest disorder of the mind is to let will direct it. — Louis Pasteur

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

Pasteur, L. 1854. Chance favours only the prepared mind. — John M. Ziman

Time is the best appraiser of scientific work, and I am aware that an industrial discovery rarely produces all its fruit in the hands of its first inventor. — Louis Pasteur

Pasteur equally as mischief-makers. As late as 1883, Michel Peter, a Parisian physician held in high esteem by his colleagues, went so far as to denounce Pasteur's work to his face, at an address at the National Academy of Medicine. "What do I care about your microbes? . . . I have said, and I repeat, that all this research on microbes are not worth the time spent on them or the fuss made about them, and that after all the work nothing would be changed in medicine, there would only be a few extra microbes. Medicine . . . is threatened by the invasion of incompetent, and rash persons given to dreaming." But as the discoveries mounted, these holdouts were increasingly marginalized. — Thomas Goetz

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. — Louis Pasteur

The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so. — Louis Pasteur

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity. — Louis Pasteur

No, there is now no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves. Those who affirm it have been duped by illusions, by ill-conducted experiments, spoilt by errors that they either did not perceive or did not know how to avoid. — Louis Pasteur

Oh my goodness the mystery that has prompted my objective. My quality lies exclusively in my tirelessness. — Louis Pasteur

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. — Louis Pasteur

There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God ... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility ... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution. — George Wald

It would seem to me that I was committing a theft if I were to let one day go by without doing some work. — Louis Pasteur

Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it: ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite. — Louis Pasteur

One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me — Louis Pasteur

One must not assume that an understanding of science is present in those who borrow the language — Louis Pasteur

Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him. — Louis Pasteur

Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading
that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur's life a good one, or Thomas Mann's? — Annie Dillard

What did you do today to receive your instruction? — Louis Pasteur

Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence. — Louis Pasteur