“The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.”

Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. It is in the darker. It is in the darker regions of science that great men are recognized; they are marked by ideas which light up phenomena hitherto obscure and carry science forward.

Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.

The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.

Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.

Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.

The eloquence of a scientist is clarity; scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it.

In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.

We must remain, in a word, in an intellectual disposition which seems paradoxical, but which, in my opinion, represents the true mind of the investigator. We must have a robust faith and yet not believe.

True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.

Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.

Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.

The investigator should have a robust faith – and yet not believe.

The fact that knowledge endlessly recedes as the investigator is about to grasp it is what constitutes at the same time his torment and happiness.

If I had to define life in a single phrase, I should clearly express my thought of throwing into relief one characteristic which, in my opinion, sharply differentiates biological science. I should say: life is creation.

First causes are outside the realm of science.

Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

Coaches do so much research about a referee because they believe refereeing is such a crucial part of the game that the result may hinge on what we say or do.

I started in a research lab for TV cameras, then I worked at a tape duplication facility.

The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.

he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book.

Medical researchers and military analysts forebode grim consequences.