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.

What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?

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.

In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.

Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.

If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.

One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.