I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that we are close to uncovering profound truths and insights about the world.
Louis Pasteur's quote highlights the notion that humanity is continually approaching the boundaries of knowledge, where the unknown becomes more accessible. The 'edge of mysteries' alludes to the vast unexplored areas of science and life, while the 'veil getting thinner' symbolizes the gradual unveiling of these truths as we advance in our understanding and capabilities. Pasteur, a pioneer in microbiology, suggests an optimistic view of the scientific journey—the more we learn, the more we can uncover, bringing us closer to understanding the complexities of existence.
In practice
This quote can be used during a scientific conference to emphasize the importance of curiosity in research.
To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.
The universe is an asymmetrical entity. I am inclined to believe that life as it is manifested to us must be a function of the asymmetry of the universe or of the consequence of this fact. The universe is asymmetrical; for if one placed the entire set of bodies that compose the solar system, each moving in its own way, before a mirror, the image shown would not be superimposable on the reality.
These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite.
Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention. ... [Do not] share the opinion of those narrow minds who disdain everything in science which has not an immediate application. ... A theoretical discovery has but the merit of its existence: it awakens hope, and that is all. But let it be cultivated, let it grow, and you will see what it will become.
These three things-work, will, success-fill human existences. Will opens the door to success, both brilliant and happy. Work passes these doors, and at the end of the journey success comes in to crown one's efforts.
Chance favors those who are prepared.
It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
The way to understand how different species evolved is to think about the niches that they fill in an ecosystem - basically, how they make a living.
We know so much about planets and the universe and small particles and we do not know anything about the inner state of our own bodies, we do not know about this microcosm we have inside our skin.
Perhaps scientists have been the most international of all professions in their outlook... Every time you scientists make a major invention, we politicians have to invent a new institution to cope with it-and almost invariably, these days, it must be an international institution.
I would still very much love to change the world, and there are three or four neurological diseases that I've got a personal grudge against. I wouldn't mind mopping them up in one amazing experiment to come out of my lab, and I certainly wouldn't mind transforming hundreds of thousands of people's lives overnight with some discovery.
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