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

Claude Bernard

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Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Refrain
Teaches
Ignorance
Doubt
Teach
Science
True

More quotes by Claude Bernard

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Il ne fallait jamais faire des expériences pour confirmer ses idées, mais simplement pour les contrôler. We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.
Claude Bernard
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The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
Claude Bernard
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The goal of scientific physicians in their own science ... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
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Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.
Claude Bernard
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In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.
Claude Bernard
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The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion.
Claude Bernard
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If I had to define life in a single phrase, I should clearly express my thought of throwing into relief one characteristic which, in my opinion, sharply differentiates biological science. I should say: life is creation.
Claude Bernard
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The eloquence of a scientist is clarity scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it.
Claude Bernard
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Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
Claude Bernard
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Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.
Claude Bernard
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The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries.
Claude Bernard
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Theories are like a stairway by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.
Claude Bernard
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Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
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In these researches I followed the principles of the experimental method that we have established, i.e., that, in presence of a well-noted, new fact which contradicts a theory, instead of keeping the theory and abandoning the fact, I should keep and study the fact, and I hastened to give up the theory.
Claude Bernard
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We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
Claude Bernard
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We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.
Claude Bernard
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Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.
Claude Bernard
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Effects vary with the conditions which bring them to pass, but laws do not vary. Physiological and pathological states are ruled by the same forces they differ only because of the special conditions under which the vital laws manifest themselves.
Claude Bernard
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Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
Claude Bernard
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The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.
Claude Bernard