Louis Pasteur Quotes

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

Every chemical substance, whether natural or artificial, falls into one of two major categories, according to the spatial characteristic of its form. The distinction is between those substances that have a plane of symmetry and those that do not. The former belong to the mineral, the latter to the living world.

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.

The universe is asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The universe is asymmetric.

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

Luck favors the mind that is prepared.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Science brings men nearer to God.

Nothing is lost and nothing is created in the operations of art as those of nature.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The role of the infinitely small in nature is infinitely great.

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

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

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

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

Science and peace will triumph over ignorance and war.

Inspiration is the impact of a fact on a well-prepared mind

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.

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

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

Chance favours the prepared mind.

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

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

The controls of life are structured as forms and nuclear arrangements, in a relation with the motions of the universe.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Fortune favors the well-prepared.

Chance favors those who are prepared.

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.

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.

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.

Chance favors only be prepared mind.

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.

Where are the real sources of human dignity, freedom and modern democracy, if not in the concept of infinity to which all men are equal?

If it is a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the multiplication of these minute bodies [microbes], it is a consoling hope that Science will not always remain powerless before such enemies ...

Science advances through tentative answers to a series of more and more subtle questions which reach deeper and deeper into the essence of natural phenomena.

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.

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

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.

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

The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God be called 'Brahma,' 'Allah,' 'Jehovah,' or 'Jesus'; and on the pavement of those temples men will be seen kneeling, prostrate, annihilated, in the thought of the Infinite. At these supreme moments there is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere continuation of phenomena proper to a mechanical equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements through the gradual action of the forces of matter.

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

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.

A bit of science distances one from God, but much science nears one to Him.

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

The grandeur of the acts of men are measured by the inspiration from which they spring.

Life comes only from life.

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

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.

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.

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

I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity.

The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language
the word 'enthusiasm'
en theos
a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.

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.

Since the most ancient times, all men, and particularly those who endeavored in the practice of medicine, have brought closer together two natural phenomena of capital importance: illness or fever and fermentation.

One must work; one must work. I have done what I could.

The greatest malfunction of spirit is to believe things.

The universe is asymmetric.

Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.

The Ancients understood the omnipotence of the underside of things.