Quote

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.

Claude Bernard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Truth
Experiments
Enough
Fellows
Believe
Destroy
Make
Seek
Men
Theory
Instead
Science
Firmly
Others
Theories

More quotes by Claude Bernard

Image
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
Image
It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.
Claude Bernard
Image
We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
The terrain is everything the germ is nothing.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
Science rejects the indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
Image
All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.
Claude Bernard
Image
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
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
Image
First causes are outside the realm of science.
Claude Bernard
Image
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.
Claude Bernard
Image
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