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

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
Fact
Investigator
Facts
Investigators
Time
Constitutes
Endlessly
Torment
Grasp
Knowledge
Happiness
Recedes

More quotes by Claude Bernard

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The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
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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.
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Science admits no exceptions otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.
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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.
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The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them.
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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.
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The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.
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Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.
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We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.
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We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
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In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.
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A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.
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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.
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The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
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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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Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
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Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
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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Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.
Claude Bernard
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Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. It is in the darker. It is in the darker regions of science that great men are recognized they are marked by ideas which light up phenomena hitherto obscure and carry science forward.
Claude Bernard