Alexis Carrel quotes

Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist renowned for his pioneering work in vascular suturing and organ transplantation. His research greatly contributed to advances in modern surgery and tissue preservation. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to medical science. Here are 29 of his quotes:

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Alexis Carrel

The quality of life is more important than life itself.

Alexis Carrel

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.

Alexis Carrel

All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people.

Alexis Carrel

Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.

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.

Alexis Carrel

Intelligence is almost useless to the person whose only quality it is.

Alexis Carrel

Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.

Alexis Carrel

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

Alexis Carrel

Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.

Alexis Carrel

Hard conditions of life are indispensable to bringing out the best in human personality.

Alexis Carrel

Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.

Alexis Carrel

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.

Alexis Carrel

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.

Alexis Carrel

In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable.

Alexis Carrel

Comforts and syphilis are the greatest enemies of mankind.

Alexis Carrel

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.

Alexis Carrel

Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.

Alexis Carrel

Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive.

Alexis Carrel

The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, the future as well as the present.

Alexis Carrel

The German government has taken energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the criminal. The ideal solution would be the suppression of each of these individuals as soon as he has proven himself to be dangerous.

Alexis Carrel

The conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts.

Alexis Carrel