List of Albert Claude Quotes

Small Bodies, About Half A Micron In Diameter, And Later Referred To Under The Name Of 'mitochondria' Were Detected Under The Light Microscope As Early As 1894.

Until 1930 Or Thereabout Biologists [using Microscopes], In The Situation Of Astronomers And Astrophysicists, Were Permitted To See The Objects Of Their Interest, But Not To Touch Them; The Cell Was As Distant From Us, As The Stars And Galaxies Were From Them.

I Remember Vividly My Student Days, Spending Hours At The Light Microscope, Turning Endlessly The Micrometric Screw, And Gazing At The Blurred Boundary Which Concealed The Mysterious Ground Substance Where The Secret Mechanisms Of Cell Life Might Be Found.

This Familiarity With A Respected Physician And My Appreciation Of His Work, Or The Tragedy I Experienced With The Long, Tormented Agony And Death Of My Mother Might Have Influenced Me In Wanting To Study Medicine. It Was Not The Case.

Looking Back 25 Years Later, What I May Say Is That The Facts Have Been Far Better Than The Dreams. In The Long Course Of Cell Life On This Earth It Remained, For Our Age For Our Generation, To Receive The Full Ownership Of Our Inheritance.

This Attempt To Isolate Cell Constituents Might Have Been A Failure If They Had Been Destroyed By The Relative Brutality Of The Technique Employed. But This Did Not Happen.

When I Went To The University, The Medical School Was The Only Place Where One Could Hope To Find The Means To Study Life, Its Nature, Its Origins, And Its Ills.

I Told Him That For A Modern Scientist, Practicing Experimental Research, The Least That Could Be Said, Is That We Do Not Know. But I Felt That Such A Negative Answer Was Only Part Of The Truth. I Told Him That In This Universe In Which We Live, Unbounded In Space, Infinite In Stored Energy And, Who Knows, Unlimited In Time, The Adequate And Positive Answer, According To My Belief, Is That This Universe May, Also, Possess Infinite Potentialities.

It Is The Cells Which Create And Maintain In Us, During The Span Of Our Lives, Our Will To Live And Survive, To Search And Experiment, And To Struggle.

If We Examine The Accomplishments Of Man In His Most Advanced Endeavors, In Theory And In Practice, We Find That The Cell Has Done All This Long Before Him, With Greater Resourcefulness And Much Greater Efficiency.

No Doubt, Man Will Continue To Weigh And To Measure, Watch Himself Grow, And His Universe Around Him And With Him, According To The Ever Growing Powers Of His Tools.

Is It Absurd To Imagine That Our Social Behavior, From Amoeba To Man, Is Also Planned And Dictated, From Stored Information, By The Cells? And That The Time Has Come For Men To Be Entrusted With The Task, Through Heroic Efforts, Of Bringing Life To Other Worlds?