Claude Bernard

Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of…

— 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

Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of…

— Claude Bernard

To be worthy of the name, an experimenter must be at once theorist and practitioner. While he must completely master the art…

— Claude Bernard

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very…

— 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 terrain is everything; the germ is nothing,

— Claude Bernard

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

— Claude Bernard

Real science exists, then, only from the moment when a phenomenon is accurately defined as to its nature and rigorously determined in…

— Claude Bernard

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

— 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

The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he…

— Claude Bernard

A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very…

— Claude Bernard

It has often been said that, to make discoveries, one must be ignorant. This opinion, mistaken in itself, nevertheless conceals a truth.…

— Claude Bernard

When a physician is called to a patient, he should decide on the diagnosis, then the prognosis, and then the treatment. ...…

— 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

Science does not permit exceptions.

— 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 discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.

— Claude Bernard

In the patient who succumbed, the cause of death was evidently something which was not found in the patient who recovered; this…

— Claude Bernard

Art is 'I'; science is 'we'.

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

— Claude Bernard

Experimentation is an active science.

— Claude Bernard

Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.

— Claude Bernard