Ivan Pavlov quotes

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist famous for his research on conditioned reflexes. His experiments with dogs led to the discovery of classical conditioning, a fundamental principle in behavioral psychology. He made significant contributions to the understanding of learning and behavior. Here are 32 of his quotes:

Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit.

Ivan Pavlov

Learn, compare, collect the facts!

Ivan Pavlov

Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without.

Ivan Pavlov

It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.

Ivan Pavlov

It goes without saying that the desire to accomplish the task with more confidence, to avoid wasting time and labour, and to spare our experimental animals as much as possible, made us strictly observe all the precautions taken by surgeons in respect to their patients.

Ivan Pavlov

As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal.

Ivan Pavlov

The Sun-Paul must consider only one thing: what is the relation of this or that external reaction of the animal to the phenomena of the external world?

Ivan Pavlov

It has long been known for sure that the sight of tasty food makes a hungry man's mouth water; also lack of appetite has always been regarded as an undesirable phenomenon, from which one might conclude that appetite is essentially linked with the process of digestion.

Ivan Pavlov

Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised, always have the courage to say to yourself-I am ignorant.

Ivan Pavlov

Appetite, craving for food, is a constant and powerful stimulator of the gastric glands.

Ivan Pavlov

From the described experiment it is clear that the mere act of eating, the food even not reaching the stomach, determines the stimulation of the gastric glands.

Ivan Pavlov

Our success was mainly due to the fact that we stimulated the nerves of animals that easily stood on their own feet and were not subjected to any painful stimulus either during or immediately before stimulation of their nerves.

Ivan Pavlov

Thanks to our present surgical methods in physiology we can demonstrate at any time almost all phenomena of digestion without the loss of even a single drop of blood, without a single scream from the animal undergoing the experiment.

Ivan Pavlov

But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods.

Ivan Pavlov

I was, I am and will remain the Russian, the son of the Motherland. Her life first of all I will be interested in. I will live with her interests. With her's dignity I will strengthen mine.

Ivan Pavlov

Perfect as is the wing of a bird, it never could raise the bird up without resting on air. Facts are the air of a scientist. Without them you never can fly. Without them your "theories" are vain efforts.

Ivan Pavlov

Don't become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.

Ivan Pavlov

It is clear to all that the animal organism is a highly complex system consisting of an almost infinite series of parts connected both with one another and, as a total complex, with the surrounding world, with which it is in a state of equilibrium.

Ivan Pavlov

In the case of the stomach, however, the nerves of the glandular cells were always severed when constructing an artificially isolated pouch and this, naturally, affected the normal work of the stomach.

Ivan Pavlov

Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts.

Ivan Pavlov

The gastric laboratory uses its protein ferment under an acid reaction.

Ivan Pavlov

The digestive canal represents a tube passing through the entire organism and communicating with the external world, i.e. as it were the external surface of the body, but turned inwards and thus hidden in the organism.

Ivan Pavlov