Louis Pasteur Quotes
105 Louis Pasteur Quotes
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Even if this project should not produce any finding worth publishing you can imagine that it would be very useful for me to do practical work for several months with such an experienced chemist. During the summer I will try to do some other work myself.
Louis Pasteur
[On sending his sisters a dictionary] I do not need it, as you can imagine, but such a dictionary is always useful to have in the house.
Louis Pasteur
They may not be very expressive or very intelligible… and they may not be properly done, but the intention is there, and that means a great deal.
Louis Pasteur
You must be, as I am, enormously eager to learn German. Let’s go together; we will never be sorry to have made this trip. I must tell you that I really want to do it, and only a very serious obstacle could make me change my mind. I am bound and determined to know German and English a few years from now.
Louis Pasteur
[Pasteur’s determination did come up against a ‘very serious obstacle’, namely, shortage of money.] The expenses for my theses more than ruined me.
Louis Pasteur
Studying this question would certainly not have occurred to me if M.M Fabve and Silberman had not spoken about it in terms that contradict the views generally held by chemists.
Louis Pasteur
When I began to pursue specific research, I sought to strengthen my abilities by studying crystals, anticipating that this would provide me with knowledge I could use in the study of chemistry.
Louis Pasteur
How does the same stone, the same salt, assume the form of prisms or of needles without changing it’s composition by one atom, while the rose always has the same petals, the acorn the same shape, the cedar the same height and the same development?
Louis Pasteur
Dimorphism is not in the Dictionnaire de l’Academie (Dictionary of the Academy).
Louis Pasteur
I would rather stand at the head of my classes than receive ten thousand praises flung out superficially in the course of current conversation.
Louis Pasteur
My dear sisters, I recommend to you once again to be industrious and to love each other.
Louis Pasteur
It was evident that this most vivid light had been thrown upon the cause of the phenomenon of rotary polarisation…. In a word, that a great path, new and unforeseen, had been opened to science.
Louis Pasteur
[To those who believe in spontaneous generation] Everything comes from a germ, and even these animalcula, which seem to you to have been born spontaneously in the infusions in which they develop, come quite simply from germs and spores which are floating in the air. You have conducted your experiments badly; I will begin them over again, and I will prove to you that the substances which you regard as subject to decay are not so when they are rigorously sheltered from the air.
Louis Pasteur
[To Napoleon III] Sire, my researches in regard to fermentations and the role played by microscopic organisms have opened up to physiological chemistry new avenues of which the agricultural industries and the study of medicine have already begun to reap the fruit. But the field which remains to be traversed is immense. My greatest desire would be to explore this field with renewed ardour, without being hampered by the insufficiency of material means.
Louis Pasteur
How can researches be conducted in relation to gangrene, the viruses, and experiments in inoculation, unless we have quarters suitable for receiving animals, whether alive or dead?
Louis Pasteur
[In hospital paralysed on the left side when people feared he would die] I regret to die: I should like to have been of more service to my country. [He recovered enough to get out of hospital.]
Louis Pasteur
[On receiving an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Bonn twenty two years after beginning his scientific career.] It was, in my eyes, the confirmation of a secret hope, of the truth of which I felt more and more convinced, namely, that my researches were opening up new horizons to the study of medicine.
Louis Pasteur
[On wanting to send back the same honorary degree due to a war] Today the sight of this same parchment has become odious to me, and I feel that it is an insult to have my name, with the qualification of virum clarissimum which you bestowed upon it, placed under the auspices of a name condemned henceforth to the execration of my my country, that of rex Guilelmus.
Louis Pasteur
I have my head filled with the finest projects for work, but the war has forced my brain to lie fallow. I feel ready now to become productive again, although alas, I may be deceiving myself! In any case I shall try.
Louis Pasteur
[On thinking out aloud in when thinking about a students question.] Ah, why am I not rich, a millionaire?
Louis Pasteur
How fortunate you are to be young and in good health! Oh, if I could only recommence a new life of study and toil! Poor France! Dear mother land! If I could only contribute to relieve you from your disasters!
Louis Pasteur
It is not evident that all the researches to which I have devoted myself for seventeen years, regardless of the efforts they have cost me, are the products of the same ideas, the same principles, forced by incessant toil to yield constantly new results? The best proof that an investigator is on the road to truth is the uninterrupted fertility of his labours.
Louis Pasteur
We know that… What do we know? We know nothing at all. [Denys Cochin submitted a report to Louis Pasteur saying ‘The fact I cited was taken from one of your own writings’] That has nothing to do with it; you ought to have verified me.
Louis Pasteur
We now possess virus-vaccines against anthrax, capable of warding off the deadly disease, without ever proving fatal themselves – living vaccines, that may be cultivated at will and transported anywhere without suffering harm; vaccines, in short, that are prepared by a method which we have reason to believe is susceptible of being generalised, because it has once already been put into practice for the purpose of obtaining vaccine against chicken cholera.
Louis Pasteur
Above and beyond the starry vault, what is there? Other new star-lit skies. So be it! And above and beyond them? The human mind, urged on by an invincible force, will never cease to ask itself, ‘What is there beyond?’
Louis Pasteur
What if the mind should try to stop at some point, either in time or space? Since that point where it stops marks only a finite greatness, merely greater than those which preceded it, the mind has scarcely begun to contemplate it when the implacable question returns, and never can its curiosity be silenced.
Louis Pasteur
Above and beyond, are space, time, greatness without limit. No one comprehends these words. Whoever proclaims the existence of the infinite, and no one can evade doing so, sums up in that affirmation more of the supernatural than is contained in all the miracles of all religions; for the notion of the infinite has this double character, of being undeniable and incomprehensible.
Louis Pasteur
At this moment of poignant anguish, we must crave mercy from our own brains; all the sources of intellectual life threaten to give way; we feel ourselves on the point of yielding to the sublime folly of Pascal.
Louis Pasteur
The idea of God is one form of the idea of the infinite. So long as the mystery of the infinite weighs upon human thought, temples will be raised to the cult of the infinite, whether God be called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah or Jesus. And on the pavement of these temples we will see men kneeling, prostrated, lost in the thought of the infinite. Metaphysics does nothing more than transfer to within ourselves this dominant notion of the infinite.
Louis Pasteur
Is not the conception of the ideal merely a faculty reflected from the infinite, which leads us, when in the presence of beauty, to conceive of a still higher form of beauty?
Louis Pasteur
Are science and the passionate desire to understand anything else than the effect of that spur towards knowledge which the mystery of the universe has placed in our souls?
Louis Pasteur
[On two unworthy criticisms from the Academy of Sciences] Do you know what you lack? You lack the power of observation! And you, the power of reasoning.
Louis Pasteur
[On further discussion with the Academy of Sciences when they talked about his lack of courage in his form of speech] The heat of the discussion carried me away, I regret my impetuosity. I beg that my colleagues will accept my sincere apology. …. I have acknowledged myself at fault; I have willingly made my excuses; may I not be permitted to plead an extenuating circumstance? It is this, that what I said was true! Absolutely true!
Louis Pasteur
[On the first time injecting the rabies vaccine into the skull of a dog (which incidentally worked)] Poor beast! Its brain is no doubt ruptured; it must be paralysed.
Louis Pasteur
I am deeply moved by the honour done me by the town of Dole; but permit me, while expressing my appreciation, to utter a protest against this excess of glory. In according me a homage which is rendered only to the illustrious dead, you are usurping in advance the judgement of posterity.
Louis Pasteur
[On being sure his rabies vaccine worked on dogs but hesitant on using it on human beings] I have not yet dared to make any attempt upon man, in spite of my confidence as to the result, and in spite of the numerous opportunities that have been offered me since my last lecture at the Academy of Sciences. I am too much afraid of a failure, which may compromise my future plans. I want first to collect a multitude of successful cases of the treatment of animals. In this respect matters are going well. I already have numerous examples of dogs rendered immune after having been bitten. I take two dogs, and I cause them to be bitten by another dog that is mad. I vaccinate one of them, and I leave the other without treatment; the latter dies of hydrophobia; the one that was vaccinated is immune. But, no matter to what extent I should multiply these examples of the prophylaxis of hydrophobia in dogs, it seems to me that my hand would inevitably tremble when the time came to apply the treatment to a human being.
Louis Pasteur
If I were king or emperor, or even President of the Republic, this is the way in which I should exercise my right to pardon prisoners condemned to death. I should offer the condemned man, through his lawyer, on the eve of his client’s execution, the choice between imminent death and an experiment consisting of preventive inoculation of hydrophobia for the purpose of rendering his constitution immune to that disease. Aside from the risks of these experiments, the life of the condemned man would be spared. In case the experiments should succeed – and, in point of fact, I am sure they would – in order to protect society, which had previously condemned the criminal, he could be kept in custody for the rest of his life. Every condemned man would accept. For the only thing which a condemned man fears is death.
Louis Pasteur
We ought to be allowed to try to give cholera to criminals condemned to death by making them swallow cultures of these bacilli. As soon as the malady should make its appearance the remedies regarded as most efficacious could be immediately administered.
Louis Pasteur
And on the day when, foreseeing the future possibilities that would be opened up by the discovery of the virus. I appealed directly to my country to enable us by means of private subscriptions to build laboratories designed not only for the treatment of hydrophobia, but also for the study of virulent and contagious diseases, that same day France gave to us with lavish hands…
Louis Pasteur
[On building The Pasteur Institute (The Instit Pasteur)] This grand building of which it may be truly said that there is not a single stone that is not the material sign of a generous thought. All the virtues have paid tribute towards the erection of this abode of toil.
Louis Pasteur
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