Claude Bernard

Science does not permit exceptions.

— Claude Bernard

Hatred is the most clear- sighted, next to genius…

— Claude Bernard

Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.

— Claude Bernard

The investigator should have a robust faith - and yet not believe.

— Claude Bernard

Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

— Claude Bernard

We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.

— Claude Bernard

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.

— Claude Bernard

Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.

— Claude Bernard

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

— Claude Bernard

The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.

— Claude Bernard

We must keep our freedom of mind, ... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is…

— Claude Bernard

When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the…

— Claude Bernard

Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.

— Claude Bernard

The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind…

— Claude Bernard

The eloquence of a scientist is clarity; scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is…

— Claude Bernard

A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows…

— Claude Bernard

A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,-'Art is…

— Claude Bernard

We must remain, in a word, in an intellectual disposition which seems paradoxical, but which, in my opinion, represents the true mind…

— Claude Bernard

In every enterprise ... the mind is always reasoning, and, even when we seem to act without a motive, an instinctive logic…

— Claude Bernard

In a word, I consider hospitals only as the entrance to scientific medicine; they are the first field of observation which a…

— Claude Bernard

Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists…

— Claude Bernard

In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes,…

— Claude Bernard

The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that…

— Claude Bernard

With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this…

— Claude Bernard

Descriptive anatomy is to physiology what geography is to history, and just as it is not enough to know the typography of…

— Claude Bernard

Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on…

— Claude Bernard

We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.

— Claude Bernard

In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.

— Claude Bernard

We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.

— Claude Bernard

It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.

— Claude Bernard

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.

— Claude Bernard

True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.

— Claude Bernard

Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of…

— Claude Bernard

The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and…

— Claude Bernard

All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the…

— Claude Bernard

Il ne fallait jamais faire des expériences pour confirmer ses idées, mais simplement pour les contrôler. We must never make experiments to…

— Claude Bernard

“The true worth of a researcher lies in pursuing what he did not seek in his experiment as well as what he…

— Claude Bernard

The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which…

— Claude Bernard

The goal of scientific physicians in their own science ... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in…

— Claude Bernard

The fact that knowledge endlessly recedes as the investigator is about to grasp it is what constitutes at the same time his…

— Claude Bernard