Ivan Pavlov Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

It goes without saying that the desire to accomplish the task with more confidence, to avoid wasting time and labour, and to spare our experimental animals as much as possible, made us strictly observe all the precautions taken by surgeons in respect to their patients.

Ivan Pavlov
It is perfectly clear that the horizon of medical observation of life is immeasurably wider than the sphere of vital phenomena which the physiologists have before their eyes in their laboratories. Hence the permanent incongruity between that which medicine knows, sees and empirically applies, and that which physiology can reproduce and explain.

Ivan Pavlov
Science moves in fits and starts, depending on the progress in methods of research. Every step forward in method takes us a step higher, affording a broader view of the horizon and of objects that were invisible before.

Ivan Pavlov
If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere.

Ivan Pavlov
Here I now simply uphold and assert the absolute and incontestable right of natural science to operate wherever and whenever it is able to display its power. And who knows the limits to this!

Ivan Pavlov
Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised, always have the courage to say to yourself — I am ignorant.

Ivan Pavlov
Physiology has, at last, gained control over the nerves which stimulate the gastric glands and the pancreas.

Ivan Pavlov
Men are apt to be much more influenced by words than by the actual facts of the surrounding reality

Ivan Pavlov
Observation collects that which nature has to offer, whereas experiment takes from her that which it desires.

Ivan Pavlov
Experiment alone crowns the efforts of medicine, experiment limited only by the natural range of the powers of the human mind.

Ivan Pavlov
It is often said, and not without truth, that science advances by stages dependent upon the results accruing from particular methods. With each advance in technique we reach a higher level from which a wider field of view is open to us, and in which we see events previously out of range.

Ivan Pavlov
Do not become the archivist of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them.

Ivan Pavlov
Perfect as is the wing of a bird, it never could raise the bird up without resting on air. Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you never can fly. Without them your theories are vain efforts.

Ivan Pavlov
The Sun-Paul must consider only one thing: what is the relation of this or that external reaction of the animal to the phenomena of the external world?

Ivan Pavlov
With a good method even a rather untalented person can accomplish much.

Ivan Pavlov
As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal.

Ivan Pavlov
Essentially only one thing in life interests us: our psychical constitution, the mechanism of which was and is wrapped in darkness. All human resources, art, religion, literature, philosophy and historical sciences, all of them join in bringing light in this darkness.

Ivan Pavlov
As we have seen, bread, and especially dry bread, evokes secretion of considerably larger quantities of saliva than meat.

Ivan Pavlov
What is a scientific laboratory? It is a small world, a small corner of reality. And in this small corner man labors with his mind at the task of... knowing this reality in order correctly to predict what will happen... even to direct this reality according to his will, to command it, if this is within our technical means.

Ivan Pavlov
Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit.

Ivan Pavlov
For the naturalist everything lies in the method, in the chance of obtaining an unshakeable, lasting truth; and solely from this point of view, which for him is obligatory, the soul, as a naturalistic principle, is not only unnecessary but even harmful to his work, in vain limiting his courage and the depth of his analysis.

Ivan Pavlov
The physiologist who succeeds in penetrating deeper and deeper into the digestive canal becomes convinced that it consists of a number of chemical laboratories equipped with various mechanical devices.

Ivan Pavlov
Do not allow haughtiness to take you in possession. Due to that you will refuse useful advice and friendly help, you will lose the standard of objectiveness.

Ivan Pavlov
The outer limit of physiological knowledge, its goal, is to express this infinitely complex interrelationship of the organism with the surrounding world in the form of an exact scientific formula.

Ivan Pavlov
It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread — the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.

Ivan Pavlov