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The terrain is everything the germ is nothing.

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
Terrain
Germs
Everything
Nothing
Germ

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.
Claude Bernard
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Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of their fellows ... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.
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True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
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Hatred is the most clear- sighted, next to genius.
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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.
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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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Science rejects the indeterminate.
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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.
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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A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,-'Art is myself science is ourselves. '
Claude Bernard
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A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.
Claude Bernard
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Science does not permit exceptions.
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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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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Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
Claude Bernard
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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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Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
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It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.
Claude Bernard
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Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.
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