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We must keep our freedom of mind, and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

Claude Bernard

The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Body Environment Freedom Independence Live Medium Stability
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Abandonment Acceptance Believe Conflict Fact Intuition Support Theory
Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Active Experiment Observation Passive Science
But while I accept specialization in the practice, I reject it utterly in the theory of science.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Acceptance Myself Practice Science Theory
The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Compare Requirement Statistics Treat
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Imagination Leaving Science Yourself
The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Believe Doubt Man Science True
A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Fragment Man Rise Science Seek Truth
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Believe Faith Intellectual Opinion Word
The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Doubt Experiment Freedom Greatness Leave Medicine Mindset Principle Virtue
The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Illusion Influence Mental Mindset Thinking
A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Appearance Discovery Greatness Light Path Rise Shift
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Break Change Enough Ideas Instrument Intellectual Purpose
True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Doubt Ignorance Science Teaching True
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Greatness Mindset Rise Satisfaction Strive
Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Experiment Fundamental Observation

We must keep our freedom of mind, and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

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We must keep our freedom of mind, and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

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Popular Authors

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