Quotes by Alexis Carrel

• Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.
• Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge.
• The atmosphere of libraries, lecture rooms and laboratories is dangerous to those who shut themselves up in them too long. It separates us from reality like a fog.
• The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.
• The love of beauty in its multiple forms is the noblest gift of the human cerebrum.
• Religion brings to man an inner strength, spiritual light, and ineffable peace.
• The quality of life is more important than life itself.
• Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.
• To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.
• The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one's day and every night to examine the results obtained.
• All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people.
• Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
• All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.
• Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive.
• Comforts and syphilis are the greatest enemies of mankind.
• Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.
• Hard conditions of life are indispensable to bringing out the best in human personality.
• In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable.
• Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.
• A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.