French Scientist Quotes

Marie Curie

Louis Pasteur

Pierre Curie

Antoine Lavoisier

Louis de Broglie

Irène Joliot-Curie

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

Science should not concern itself in any way with the philosophical consequences of its discoveries.

A great discovery does not leap completely achieved from the brain of the scientist, as Minerva sprang, all panoplied, from the head of Jupiter; it is the fruit of accumulated preliminary work.

It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it.

Quantum physics is no longer an abstract theory for specialists. We must now absolutely include it in our education and also in our culture.

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

Although the vulgar cannot fathom all the mysteries of the heavens, their imagination receives some compensation in the strange fancies which comets engender, as they have always enjoyed the privilege of creating ecstasy.

Félix Archimède Pouchet

Astrophysicists have the formidable privilege of having the largest view of the Universe; particle detectors and large telescopes are today used to study distant stars, and throughout space and time, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, the Universe never ceases to surprise us by revealing its structures little by little.

Jean-Pierre Luminet

To give us the science of motion God and Nature have joined hands and created the intellect of Galileo.

Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest.

Paul Sabatier (chemist)

As the History of any Science ought to relate the labours, the discoveries, and the errors of the cultivators of that Science; and to shew the obstacles which they have been obliged to surmount, and the mistaken paths into which they have sometimes been misled; it cannot therefore fail of being very useful to persons engaged in the same pursuits.

We must recognize an invisible hand which holds the balance in the formation of compounds. A compound is a substance to which Nature assigns fixed ratios, it is, in short, a being which Nature never creates other than balance in hand, pondere et mensurd.

You are invited to come to see the Earth turn, tomorrow, from three to five, at Meridian Hall of the Paris Observatory.

My whole existence has been devoted to science and to teaching, and these two intense passions have brought me very great joy.

The facts which our theories enable us to discover, subsist and are linked together long after these theories have disappeared. Out of the materials of former edifices overthrown, new dwellings are constantly being reconstructed.

Lucien Poincaré

The most valuable and most precious of all Metals is the most useless in Physick, except when considered as an Antidote to Poverty.

Étienne François Geoffroy

On a particular substance contained in the seawater.

Title of his work on the discovery of Bromine

Antoine Jérôme Balard

Each man who receives a liberal education today counts chemistry as one of the indispensable parts of his studies.

Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy

The triumph of a theory is to embrace the greatest number and the greatest variety of facts.

Charles-Adolphe Wurtz

To be in a position to discover the laws which link phenomena together, it is important to make use of the very powerful instrument of calculation ("le calcul ") by means of which one may more easily grasp the relations between bodies.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Sir, please believe me, it's the first time this has ever happened. Have another try, don't get upset. You know our Theorems are GUARANTEED.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Knowledge is encoded in models. Models are synthetic sets of rules, and pictures, and algorithms providing us with useful representations of the world of our perceptions and of their patterns.

Didier Sornette

In the bounds of nature, a vacuum, which is nothing, can find no place. There is no power in nature which from nothing could have made the universe, and none which could reduce the universe to nothing: that requires the same virtue.

It is because science is sure of nothing that it is always advancing.

Error is all around us and creeps in at the least opportunity. Every method is imperfect.

Charles Nicolle

The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game.

The French Academy of Sciences is the receptacle of a crowd of mediocrities and ignoramuses whose places have been made as college professors, herb collectors, village veterinarians and assistant engineers of bridges and roads.