Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife she has thought much worse things about you.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.

Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.