Fortune favors the prepared mind.
— Louis Pasteur
Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.
— 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
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.
— Louis Pasteur
There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
— Louis Pasteur
It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.
— Louis Pasteur
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.
— Louis Pasteur
One must work; one must work. I have done what I could.
— Louis Pasteur
Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment.
— 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
Man’s first glance at the universe discovers only variety, diversity, multiplicity of phenomena. Let that glance be illuminated by science—by the science which brings man closer to God,—and simplicity and unity shine on all sides.
— 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
Analogy cannot serve as proof.
— Louis Pasteur
All things are hidden, obscure and debatable if the cause of the phenomena is unknown, but everything is clear if its cause be known.
— Louis Pasteur
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
As I show you this liquid, I too could tell you, ‘I took my drop of water from the immensity of creation, and I took it filled with that fecund jelly, that is, to use the language of science, full of the elements needed for the development of lower creatures. And then I waited, and I observed, and I asked questions of it, and I asked it to repeat the original act of creation for me; what a sight it would be! But it is silent! It has been silent for several years, ever since I began these experiments. Yes! And it is because I have kept away from it, and am keeping away from it to this moment, the only thing that it has not been given to man to produce, I have kept away from it the germs that are floating in the air, I have kept away from it life, for life is the germ, and the germ is life.’
— Louis Pasteur
Happy is he who bears a god within himself, an ideal of beauty, and obeys him: an ideal of art, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel. These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. All are illuminated by reflections of the sublime.
— Louis Pasteur
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
If I have sometimes disturbed our academies by somewhat livelier discussions, it is because I was passionately defending truth.
— Louis Pasteur
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
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
The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.
— Louis Pasteur
Image Credit : Paul Nadar [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
