Louis Pasteur Quotes

My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The flavor of wine is like delicate poetry.

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

Whether our efforts are, or not, favored by life, let us be able to say, when we come near to the great goal, I have done what I could.

Chance favors those who are prepared.

Are the atoms of the dextroacid (tartaric) grouped in the spirals of a right-hand helix or situated at the angles of an irregular tetrahedron, or arranged in such or such particular unsymmetrical fashion? We are unable to reply to these questions. But there can be no reason for doubting that the grouping of the atoms has an unsymmetrical arrangement with a non-superimposable image. It is not less certain that the atoms of the laevo-acid realize precisely an unsymmetrical arrangement of the inverse of the above.

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.

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.

Chance favours a prepared mind.

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

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

La fortuna juega a favor de una mente preparada

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.

Chance favours the trained mind.

Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.

You have not succeeded in your experiments, that is all there is to it.

The greatest malfunction of spirit is to believe things.

Bernard was right. The germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.

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'.

Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind.

In that memorable year, 1822: Oersted, a Danish physicist, held in his hands a piece of copper wire, joined by its extremities to the two poles of a Volta pile. On his table was a magnetized needle on its pivot, and he suddenly saw (by chance you will say, but chance only favours the mind which is prepared) the needle move and take up a position quite different from the one assigned to it by terrestrial magnetism. A wire carrying an electric current deviates a magnetized needle from its position. That, gentlemen, was the birth of the modern telegraph.

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

After death, life reappears in a different form and with different laws. It is inscribed in the laws of the permanence of life on the surface of the earth and everything that has been a plant and an animal will be destroyed and transformed into a gaseous, volatile and mineral substance.

Luck favors the mind that is prepared.

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.

Question your priorities often, make sure God always comes first.

Messieurs, c'est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot." (Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.)

Do not promote what you can't explain, simplify, and prove early.

Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and obeys it.

Preconceived ideas are like searchlights which illumine the path of the experimenter and serve him as a guide to interrogate nature. They become a danger only if he transforms them into fixed ideas-this is why I should like to see these profound words inscribed on the threshold of all the temples of science: 'The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.'

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

There is no such thing as applied science, only the application of pure science.

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

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.

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.

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention. ... [Do not] share the opinion of those narrow minds who disdain everything in science which has not an immediate application. ... A theoretical discovery has but the merit of its existence: it awakens hope, and that is all. But let it be cultivated, let it grow, and you will see what it will become.

There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.

The universe is asymmetric.

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.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

My present and most fixed opinion regarding the nature of alcoholic fermentation is this: The chemical act of fermentation is essentially a phenomenon correlative with a vital act, beginning and ending with the latter. I believe that there is never any alcoholic fermentation without their being simultaneously the organization, development, multiplication of the globules, or the pursued, continued life of globules which are already formed.

Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War...

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