Alexis Carrel Quotes

There are no watertight compartments in our inmost nature.

Prayer, like radium, is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.

Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge.

Prayer is a cry of distress, a demand for help, a hymn of love.

Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate ... It supplies us with a flow of sustaining power in our daily lives.

Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.

In recognition of his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood-vessels and organs.

Logic never attracts men to the point of carrying them away.

Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education, instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. ...Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of pres

It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits ... The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number.

Happiness depends on one being exactly fitted to the nature of one's work.

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

Man offers himself to God. He stands before Him like the canvas before the painter or the marble before the sculptor. At the same time he asks for His grace, expresses his needs and those of his brothers in suffering. Such a type of prayer demands complete renovation. The modest, the ignorant, and the poor are more capable of this self-denial than the rich and the intellectual.

Jesus knows our world. He does not disdain us like the God of Aristotle. We can speak to Him and He answers us. Although He is a person like ourselves, He is God and transcends all things.

In joy or sorrow, health or sickness, prosperity or the reverse, the effort must still continue. One must rise after every fall and gradually acquire courage, faith, the will to succeed and the capacity to love.

Enormous amounts of money are spent for publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men.

The atmosphere of libraries, lecture rooms and laboratories is dangerous to those who shut themselves up in them too long. It separates us from reality like a fog.

Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock of inertia.

Prayer, the basic exercise of the spirit, must be actively practiced in our private lives. The neglected soul of the human being must be made strong enough to assert itself once more. For if the power of prayer is again released and used in the lives of common men and women; if the spirit declares its aims clearly and boldly, there is yet hope that our prayers for a better world will be answered.

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

One must train oneself, by small and frequent efforts, to dominate one's feelings.

If the doctor of today does not become the dietician of tomorrow, the dietician of today will become the doctor of tomorrow.

The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.

The quality of life is more important than life itself.

Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.

Intelligence is almost useless to the person whose only quality it is.

To accomplish our destiny it is not enough to merely guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

A tissue is evidently an enduring thing. It's functional and structural conditions become modified from moment to moment. Time is really the fourth dimension of living organisms. It enters as part into the constitution of a tissue. Cell colonies, or organs, are events which progressively unfold themselves. They must be studied like history.

Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive.

The search for God is indeed, an entirely personal undertaking ... the most audacious adventure that one can dare.

Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind, and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.

When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.