Claude Bernard Short Quotes

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Facts are neither great nor small in themselves.

Claude Bernard
Men sometimes seem to confuse experiment with observation.

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

Claude Bernard
True science teaches us to doubt and to abstain from ignorance.

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

Claude Bernard
If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation.

Claude Bernard
In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.

Claude Bernard
Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

Claude Bernard
A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.

Claude Bernard
Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

Claude Bernard
The nature of our mind leads us to seek the essence or the why of things.

Claude Bernard
Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of dose.

Claude Bernard
There must be a general idea to verify; without that there is no scientist.

Claude Bernard
The application of mathematics to natural phenomena is the aim of all science.

Claude Bernard
We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.

Claude Bernard
Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.

Claude Bernard
We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.

Claude Bernard
Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.

Claude Bernard
General physiology is the basic biological science toward which all others converge.

Claude Bernard
An experiment is fundamentally just an observation induced with some object or another.

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

Claude Bernard
I do not understand how we can teach practical and exact science on the basis of statistics.

Claude Bernard
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will never understand what he finds.

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

Claude Bernard
But while I accept specialization in the practice, I reject it utterly in the theory of science.

Claude Bernard
By a marvellous compensation, science, in humbling our pride, proportionately increases our power.

Claude Bernard
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.

Claude Bernard
Do not confuse theory with law. Law is scientific, theory is nothing but the subjectivity of the facts.

Claude Bernard
The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.

Claude Bernard
An experimenter can never deny a fact that he has seen and observed, merely because he cannot rediscover it.

Claude Bernard