"It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning."
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Quote collection
Claude Bernard quotes (page 1 of 5)
86 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds."
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"When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted."
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"Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown."
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"Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results,only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim."
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"The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing."
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"A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes."
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"Art is 'I'; science is 'we'."
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"Descriptive anatomy is to physiology what geography is to history, and just as it is not enough to know the typography of a country to understand its history, so also it is not enough to know the anatomy of organs to understand their functions."
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"Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery."
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"Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride."
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"All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment."
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"Real science exists, then, only from the moment when a phenomenon is accurately defined as to its nature and rigorously determined in relation to its material conditions, that is, when its law is known. Before that, we have only groping and empiricism."
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"The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science."
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"True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain."
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"I do not ... reject the use of statistics in medicine, but I condemn not trying to get beyond them and believing in statistics as the foundation of medical science. ... Statistics ... apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still [uncertain or] indeterminate. ... There will always be some indeterminism ... in all the sciences, and more in medicine than in any other. But man's intellectual conquest consists in lessening and driving back indeterminism in proportion as he gains ground for determinism by the help of the experimental method."
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"Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave."
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"The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen."
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"In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead."
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"Hatred is the most clear- sighted, next to genius."
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