It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.

What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.

A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.

Theories pass. The frog remains.

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.