Louis Pasteur Quotes

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.”

— Louis Pasteur

The role of the infinitely small in nature is infinitely great.

— Louis Pasteur

“Science knows no country because it is the light that iluminates the world”

— Louis Pasteur

“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

“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

— Louis Pasteur

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

— Louis Pasteur

“The Ancients understood the omnipotence of the underside of things.”

— Louis Pasteur

I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity.

— Louis Pasteur

“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

“Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.”

— Louis Pasteur

“One must work; one must work. I have done what I could.”

— Louis Pasteur

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.

— Louis Pasteur

“Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment.”

— Louis Pasteur

“Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.”

— Louis Pasteur

“The greatest disorder of the mind is to let will direct it.”

— Louis Pasteur

“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

“When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul.”

— Louis Pasteur

“The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.”

— Louis Pasteur

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

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

— Louis Pasteur

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

— Louis Pasteur

“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

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

“Science brings men nearer to God.”

— Louis Pasteur

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

“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

“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

“The universe is asymmetric.”

— Louis Pasteur

“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

“I give them experiments and they respond with speeches.”

— Louis Pasteur

“I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.”

— Louis Pasteur

“Chance favors those who are prepared.”

— Louis Pasteur

“The greatest malfunction of spirit is to believe things.”

— Louis Pasteur

“My opinion - nay more, my conviction- is that, in the present state of science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera ; and it would be impossible for you to contradict
me, for my experiments all stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera.”

— Louis Pasteur

“Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of inventions.”

— Louis Pasteur

“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

“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

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

“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

“You have not succeeded in your experiments, that is all there is to it.”

— Louis Pasteur

“Fortune favors the well-prepared.”

— Louis Pasteur

“Chance favours the trained mind.”

— Louis Pasteur

“In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.”

— Louis Pasteur

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

“Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need decisive experimental proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to interpret the gathered observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the experiment.”

— Louis Pasteur

“By chance you will say, but chance only favors the mind which is prepared.”

— Louis Pasteur

“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

Science and peace will triumph over ignorance and war.

— Louis Pasteur

“Bernard was right. The germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.”

— Louis Pasteur

“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