Claude Bernard Quotes

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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
The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements.

Claude Bernard
Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. But put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.

Claude Bernard
Constant, or free, life is the third form of life; it belongs to the most highly organized animals. In it, life is not suspended in any circumstance, it unrolls along a constant course, apparently indifferent to the variations in the cosmic environment, or to the changes in the material conditions that surround the animal.

Claude Bernard
Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations.

Claude Bernard
The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.

Claude Bernard
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
When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.

Claude Bernard
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
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
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

Claude Bernard
Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and their sole happiness…. A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.

Claude Bernard
Theories are only verified 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
In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.

Claude Bernard
Science does not grow successively and regularly. It goes by bounds and revolutions. It is the changes in theories that mark the bounds. Science is revolutionary.

Claude Bernard
You need not hesitate to say aloud that my adversary is wrong and that he is an imbecile.

Claude Bernard
Physiologists should not be afraid to act somewhat at random, so as to try - permit me the common expression - fishing in troubled waters. This amounts to saying that, in the midst of the functional disturbances which they produce, they may hope to see some unexpected phenomena emerge which may give direction to their research.

Claude Bernard
There never are any unsuccessful experiments: they are all successful in their own definite conditions, so that negatives cannot nullify positive results.

Claude Bernard
The spontaneity enjoyed by beings endowed with life has been one of the principal objections urged against the use of experimentation in biological studies.

Claude Bernard
When entering on new ground we must not be afraid to express even risky ideas so as to stimulate research in all directions. As Priestley put it, we must not remain inactive through false modesty based on fear of being mistaken.

Claude Bernard
True science suppresses nothing, but goes on searching and is undisturbed in looking straight at things that it does not yet understand.

Claude Bernard
When one calls a new fact a discovery, the fact itself is not a discovery, but rather the new idea derived from it...

Claude Bernard
In the sciences there is doubtless a very close connection between observation and experimentation. Nevertheless it is necessary to distinguish them because everything would become confused.

Claude Bernard
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
Facts never exclude one another, they are simply explained by differences in the conditions in which they are born.

Claude Bernard
To experiment is to disturb certain natural phenomena in order to establish their nature or cause. To observe is to examine things as they pass in natural sequence. Whatever means on may use, microscopes, telescopes, one only observes.

Claude Bernard
In my opinion the true scientific spirit is that whose high aspiration fertilize the sciences and draw them on in search of truths which are still beyond them but which must not be suppressed, because they have been attacked by stronger and more delicate philosophic minds.

Claude Bernard
A theory is merely a scientific idea controlled by experiment.

Claude Bernard
I can no more accept a philosophy, then, which tries to assign boundaries to science, than a science which claims to suppress philosophic truths that are at present outside its own domain.

Claude Bernard
Pile up facts or observations as we may, we shall be none the wiser. To learn, we must necessarily reason about what we have observed, compare the facts and judge them by other facts used as controls.

Claude Bernard