Louis Pasteur Quotes

105 Louis Pasteur Quotes

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Once one is used to working, one can no longer live without it. And of course, everything in the world depends on it; in science, one is happy; in science one rises above all others.
Louis Pasteur

It means a great deal… to have will power; for deeds and work always follow the will, and work is almost always attended by success.
Louis Pasteur

These three things, will power, work, and success, are the mainstays of human existence: will power opens the doors to brilliant and happy careers; work allows us to pass through them, and once we have run the course, success will crown our achievement.
Louis Pasteur

From the lives of men who have marked their passage with a trail of enduring light, let us piously gather, for the benefit of posterity, every detail, down to the slightest words, the slightest acts calculated to reveal the guiding principles of their great souls.
Louis Pasteur

When once we have acquired the habit of work we can no longer live without it.
Louis Pasteur

Work is the thing upon which everything else in this world depends.
Louis Pasteur

By means of knowledge we raise ourselves above everybody else.
Louis Pasteur

[On searching for an elusive substance] I will pursue it for ten years, if need be.
Louis Pasteur

[On his prevision of his goal] How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! …. I must work.
Louis Pasteur

If you have every known anything of the subject, what have you done with your knowledge? And, if you have not known, why do you interfere?
Louis Pasteur



[On Napoleon III expressing surprise that it had not occurred to Pasteur to make a pecuniary profit out of his discoveries which were worth tens of millions (in 1866 dollars) to the wine industry] In France a scientist would think that he had demeaned himself if he did such a thing.
Louis Pasteur

The time has come to emancipate the experimental sciences from the obstacles which trammel them.
Louis Pasteur

Where are the true sources of human dignity, of liberty, of modern democracy, unless they are contained in the idea of the infinite, before which all men are equal?
Louis Pasteur

Your enthusiasm, my brave mother, you bequeathed to me. If I have always associated the greatness of science with the greatness of the Fatherland, it is because of the sentiments that you inspired in me.
Louis Pasteur

My dear father, whose life was as harsh as your harsh craft, you showed me what patience can accomplish when the task is long. It is to you that I owe my tenacity in carrying out the work that needs to be done from day to day. Not only did you have the qualities of perseverance that make for a useful life, you also had admiration for great men and great things. To aim higher and higher, to learn more and more, to seek constantly to rise, such were the things you taught me.
Louis Pasteur

If I have always associated the greatness of science with the greatness of my native land, it is because I was impregnated with the sentiments which you [his parents] inspired in me.
Louis Pasteur

Fortune favors the prepared mind. Chance favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur

Comtois, give up! Faith, I never will!
Louis Pasteur

The only thing which a condemned man fears is death.
Louis Pasteur

The best proof that an investigator is on the road to truth is the uninterrupted fertility of his labours.
Louis Pasteur



[On the minister of education at a school ceremony] He bellows like an ox. I am sure that outdoors he would make himself be heard by a thousand people. What he said were the usual grand phrases, but it did not mean much.
Louis Pasteur

[On ‘Essai sur Part d’etre heureux’ (Essay on The art of being happy) by Joseph Droz] I have never read anything wiser, more moral and more virtuous. In reading it, one feels one’s soul taken over by an irresistible charm and inflamed by the most sublime and the most generous feelings.
Louis Pasteur

In teaching me to read, you made sure I learned about the greatness of France. While teaching me to read, you also took pains to teach me the greatness of France.
Louis Pasteur

One day, it happened that M. Laurent, who was looking, if I recall correctly, at some perfectly crystallized sodium tungstate… showed me under the microscope that this salt, though very pure in appearance, was a mixture of three distinct kinds of crystals, which anyone who has some knowledge of the structure of crystals could easily recognize. This example and several others of the same kind made me appreciate how useful a knowledge of the crystalline forms is for chemical analyses.
Louis Pasteur

[When young and homesick] If I could only smell the odor of the tannery, I am sure I would feel much better.
Louis Pasteur

[On his early artistic ability] A few students have told me that in Besancon some people are talking about a student at the college who draws his classmates. That is because, as I have told you before, the first portrait I made is on exhibit in the parlor, where lots of people see it when they come to visit a student.
Louis Pasteur

[On Silvio Pellico’s story Mes Prisons which he recommended to his sisters] I would like them to read this interesting work where one breathes on every page a fine scent of religion that elevates and ennobles the soul.
Louis Pasteur

Every student owes it to himself to go to Paris.
Louis Pasteur

As for my baccalauret examination, the further I go, the easier I find it, because the subjects seem to shrink as I go along, and those I have studied do not seem to amount to very much.
Louis Pasteur

[To his parents on failing his baccalauret exam for the second time] How often have I cursed that baccalauret inscience that you seem to consider beyond me.
Louis Pasteur



On of the study hall teachers is sick at home and I am supposed to replace him, so that I am occupied all day long, and I do not know how long this will go on. You have your troubles, abut so do I, and mine are getting bigger from day to day. I can see that I am entering adult life.
Louis Pasteur

[On getting up at half past five in the morning.] I go to bed early and get up late.
Louis Pasteur

[To his parents] The professor we have this year is very good. This certainly give me hope for later. I will accomplish a lot this year, I am sure of it.
Louis Pasteur

[When a student] Nothing dries up the heart like this study of mathematics; it makes one lose all sensitivity. In the end one no longer has before his eyes anything but geometrical figures, letters, calculations, formulas. I, who’s soul used to be expansive, who every evening and every morning (of my year in philosphie) prayed to God with such fervor, I have let go of all that.
Louis Pasteur

[To his parents on passing his baccalauret exam] You are quite right to say that many things in the way exams are administered should be rectified. What upset me most… was their niggling words. But anyway, it’s over, and a good thing too!
Louis Pasteur

[On what he saw in Paris] Whom do I frequent here? Chappuis. And who else? Chappius.
Louis Pasteur

[On seeming Rachel in the play Marie Stuart] At one point the applause lasted for more than ten minutes. People clapped with their hands and their feet. Her features are not beautiful or regular, but because of her energy she is superb.
Louis Pasteur

[On listening to the lectures of France’s first chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas] The lecture hall is huge, and always filled. One has to be there a half hour early to get a good seat, just like in theater. Here too there is a lot of applause. There are always between six and seven hundred listeners.
Louis Pasteur [Directly to Dumas on doing some tutoring] I will be able to teach the material with clarity and energy. I should also like to assure you, Monsieur, that in making this request I am not interested in earning money , nor in the vastly more blameworthy aim of furthering my career by establishing a relationship with a person as highly placed as you are in a science to which I, too hope to devote my life. My greatest desire, I repeat, is to find a way to perfect my teaching skills.
Louis Pasteur

[To Dumas] I am too young to have seen you in your early days, but surely, you did not reach the summit you now occupy in one fell swoop, and you too must once have had a great desire to obtain a teaching post that would give you the mastery needed to climb that steep slope whose heights you dominate today.
Louis Pasteur



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