Louis Pasteur famous quotes

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Country #Science #Technology

Chance favors the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Inspirational #Softball #Sports

The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language--the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Beautiful #Spring #Inspiration

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Country #Knowledge #Hard Work

La fortuna juega a favor de una mente preparada
-- Louis Pasteur

#Favors #Fortuna

Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Wine #Health #Hygiene

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Funny #Philosophy #Drinking

My strength lies solely in my tenacity.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Lying #Tenacity

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Respect #Teacher #Children

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Motivational #Hero #Remembrance

Inspiration is the impact of a fact on a well-prepared mind
-- Louis Pasteur

#Inspiration #Impact #Mind

These three things-work, will, success-fill human existences. Will opens the door to success, both brilliant and happy. Work passes these doors, and at the end of the journey success comes in to crown one's efforts.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Success #Journey #Doors

Science belongs to no one country.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Inspirational #Country

Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Mind #Favors #Chance

Luck favors the mind that is prepared.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Opportunity #Luck #Mind

The flavor of wine is like delicate poetry.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Wine #Flavor #Delicate

Could I but know all, I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman
-- Louis Pasteur

#Peasants

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Men #Atheism #Study

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Science #Past #Names

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Life #Business #Past

It is not the germs we need worry about. It is our inner terrain.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Worry #Needs #Germs

Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Atheism #Littles

The controls of life are structured as forms and nuclear arrangements, in a relation with the motions of the universe.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Astrology #Nuclear #Form

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Science #Past #Technology

One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me
-- Louis Pasteur

#Country #Suffering #Doe

Work usually follows will.
-- Louis Pasteur

Analogy cannot serve as proof.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Analogies #Proof

The greatest disorder of the mind is to let will direct it.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Mind #Disorder #Direct

Whether our efforts are, or not, favored by life, let us be able to say, when we come near to the great goal, I have done what I could.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Goal #Effort #Done

Will opens the door to success, both brilliant and happy.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Doors #Brilliant

Intuition is given only to him who has undergone long preparation to receive it.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Long #Preparation #Intuition

I have the faith of a Breton peasant and by the time I die I hope to have the faith of a Breton peasant's wife.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Wife #Peasants

Do not promote what you can't explain, simplify, and prove early.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Simplify #Prove

After death, life reappears in a different form and with different laws. It is inscribed in the laws of the permanence of life on the surface of the earth and everything that has been a plant and an animal will be destroyed and transformed into a gaseous, volatile and mineral substance.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Life #Animal #Law

Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it: ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Art #Spring #Lying

Time is the best appraiser of scientific work, and I am aware that an industrial discovery rarely produces all its fruit in the hands of its first inventor.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Discovery #Hands #Fruit

Science advances through tentative answers to a series of more and more subtle questions which reach deeper and deeper into the essence of natural phenomena.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Essence #Answers #Natural

To know how to wonder and question is the first step of the mind toward discovery.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Discovery #Curiosity #Mind

Science brings men nearer to God.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Men

Do not put forward anything that you cannot prove by experimentation.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Prove #Experimentation

Chance favours a prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Mind #Favour #Chance

It would seem to me that I was committing a theft if I were to let one day go by without doing some work.
-- Louis Pasteur

#One Day #Theft

God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Life And Death #May #Stones

Where are the real sources of human dignity, freedom and modern democracy, if not in the concept of infinity to which all men are equal?
-- Louis Pasteur

#Real #Men #Democracy

No, there is now no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves. Those who affirm it have been duped by illusions, by ill-conducted experiments, spoilt by errors that they either did not perceive or did not know how to avoid.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Errors #Parent #World

Great problems are now being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000 centuries ago; the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a God unnecessary: such are some of the questions that humanity discusses nowadays.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Men #Thinking #Race

Outsidetheir laboratories, thephysicianand chemist are soldiers without arms on the field of battle.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Soldier #Battle #Arms

Science proceeds by successive answers to questions more and more subtle, coming nearer and nearer to the very essence of phenomena.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Essence #Answers #Subtle

Worship the spirit of criticism.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Criticism #Spirit #Worship

Happy is he who bears a god within.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Bears

I propose to provide proof... that just as always an alcoholic ferment, the yeast of beer, is found where sugar is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid, so always a special ferment, a lactic yeast, is found where sugar is transformed into lactic acid. And, furthermore, when any plastic nitrogenated substance is able to transform sugar into that acid, the reason is that it is a suitable nutrient for the growth of the [lactic] ferment.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Beer #Alcohol #Growth

Are the atoms of the dextroacid (tartaric) grouped in the spirals of a right-hand helix or situated at the angles of an irregular tetrahedron, or arranged in such or such particular unsymmetrical fashion? We are unable to reply to these questions. But there can be no reason for doubting that the grouping of the atoms has an unsymmetrical arrangement with a non-superimposable image. It is not less certain that the atoms of the laevo-acid realize precisely an unsymmetrical arrangement of the inverse of the above.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Fashion #Hands #Doubt

The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Believe #Mind #Wish

If perchance you should falter during the journey, a hand would be there to support you. If that should be wanting, God, who alone could take that hand from you, would Himself accomplish its work.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Journey #Hands #Support

Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries
-- Louis Pasteur

#Science #Library #Serene

Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Philosophy #Laughing #Sublime

These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Spring #Reflection #Action

The universe is an asymmetrical entity. I am inclined to believe that life as it is manifested to us must be a function of the asymmetry of the universe or of the consequence of this fact. The universe is asymmetrical; for if one placed the entire set of bodies that compose the solar system, each moving in its own way, before a mirror, the image shown would not be superimposable on the reality.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Believe #Moving #Reality

The artificial products do not have any molecular dissymmetry; and I could not indicate the existence of a more profound separation between the products born under the influence of life and all the others.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Profound #Separation #Influence

As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Errors #Long #Facts

Change only favours minds that are diligently looking and preparing for discovery.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Change #Discovery #Mind

Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself it is not an awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it, everything is fallible; it always has the last word.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Greatness #Ideas #Criticism

In matters of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. (not literal translation) - Dan's les champs de observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Life #Mind #Favors

You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity.
-- Louis Pasteur

#War #Ignorance #Men

We affirm the neutrality of Science ... Science is of no country. ... But if Science has no country, the scientist must keep in mind all that may work towards the glory of his country. In every great scientist will be found a great patriot.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Country #Hard Work #Mind

The only thing that can bring joy is work.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Hard Work #Joy

If science has no country, the scientist should have one, and ascribe to it the influence which his works may have in this world.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Country #Hard Work #World

Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and obeys it.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Positive #Blessed

Science knows no country because it is the light that iluminates the world
-- Louis Pasteur

#Country #Light #World

There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Children #Believe #Men

Messieurs, c'est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot." (Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.)
-- Louis Pasteur

#Gentleman #Lasts #Microbes

The role of the infinitely small in nature is infinitely great.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Roles

Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Blow #Simple #Doctrine

The universe is asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The universe is asymmetric. Acknowledging the role of molecules that have stereoisomers, some the mirror image of the others, and microorganisms whose chemistry prefers only one of those forms.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Mirrors #Molecules #Asymmetry

My present and most fixed opinion regarding the nature of alcoholic fermentation is this: The chemical act of fermentation is essentially a phenomenon correlative with a vital act, beginning and ending with the latter. I believe that there is never any alcoholic fermentation without their being simultaneously the organization, development, multiplication of the globules, or the pursued, continued life of globules which are already formed.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Believe #Organization #Development

Virulence appears in a new light which cannot but be alarming to humanity; unless nature, in her evolution down the ages (an evolution which, as we now know, has been going on for millions, nay, hundreds of millions of years), has finally exhausted all the possibilities of producing virulent or contagious diseases - which does not seem very likely.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Light #Years #Humanity

I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Veils #Mystery

In the fields of observation chance favors only those minds which are prepared.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Past #Mind #Favors

These microscopic organisms form an entire world composed of species, families and varieties whose history, which has barely begun to be written, is already fertile in prospects and findings of the highest importance. The names of these organisms are very numerous and will have to be defined and in part discarded. The word microbe which has the advantage of being shorter and carrying a more general meaning, and of having been approved by my illustrious friend, M. Littré, the most competent linguist in France, is one we will adopt.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Names #France #World

Chance favors those who are prepared.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Wrestling #Favors #Chance

What did you do today to receive your instruction?
-- Louis Pasteur

#Powerful #Today #Instruction

In good philosophy, the word cause ought to be reserved to the single Divine impulse that has formed the universe.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Philosophy #Atheism #Causes

Nothing is lost and nothing is created in the operations of art as those of nature.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Art #Nature #Lost

In that memorable year, 1822: Oersted, a Danish physicist, held in his hands a piece of copper wire, joined by its extremities to the two poles of a Volta pile. On his table was a magnetized needle on its pivot, and he suddenly saw (by chance you will say, but chance only favours the mind which is prepared) the needle move and take up a position quite different from the one assigned to it by terrestrial magnetism. A wire carrying an electric current deviates a magnetized needle from its position. That, gentlemen, was the birth of the modern telegraph.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Moving #Memorable #Discovery

I give them experiments and they respond with speeches.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Giving #Speech #Experiments

Herrmann Pidoux and Armand Trousseau stated 'Disease exists within us, because of us, and through us', Pasteur did not entirely disagree, 'This is true for certain diseases', he wrote cautiously, only to add immediately: 'I do not think that it is true for all of them'.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Truth #Thinking #Add

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention. ... [Do not] share the opinion of those narrow minds who disdain everything in science which has not an immediate application. ... A theoretical discovery has but the merit of its existence: it awakens hope, and that is all. But let it be cultivated, let it grow, and you will see what it will become.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Discovery #Practice #Mind

Every chemical substance, whether natural or artificial, falls into one of two major categories, according to the spatial characteristic of its form. The distinction is between those substances that have a plane of symmetry and those that do not. The former belong to the mineral, the latter to the living world.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Life #Fall #Two

There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Science #Tree #Special

If it is a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the multiplication of these minute bodies [microbes], it is a consoling hope that Science will not always remain powerless before such enemies...
-- Louis Pasteur

#Science #Enemy #Body

To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Knowledge #Way #Causes

Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.
-- Louis Pasteur

#Barren #Skepticism