Quote

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.

Henri Poincare

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henri Poincare
Age: 58 †
Born: 1854
Born: April 29
Died: 1912
Died: July 17
Astronomer
Engineer
Mathematician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Physicist
Researcher
Topologist
University Teacher
Le Cateau
Jules Henri Poincaré
Poincaré
Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare
Poincare
Truth
Also
Consoling
Cruel
Delusion
Wonder
Whether
Often

More quotes by Henri Poincare

Image
A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed.
Henri Poincare
Image
Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
Henri Poincare
Image
Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?
Henri Poincare
Image
Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
Henri Poincare
Image
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and subconscious.
Henri Poincare
Image
A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.
Henri Poincare
Image
If we wish to foresee the future of mathematics, our proper course is to study the history and present condition of the science.
Henri Poincare
Image
Logic sometimes makes monsters. For half a century we have seen a mass of bizarre functions which appear to be forced to resemble as little as possible honest functions which serve some purpose.
Henri Poincare
Image
All great progress takes place when two sciences come together, and when their resemblance proclaims itself, despite the apparent disparity of their substance.
Henri Poincare
Image
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living
Henri Poincare
Image
I entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At that moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with non-Euclidean geometry.
Henri Poincare
Image
When the logician has resolved each demonstration into a host of elementary operations, all of them correct, he will not yet be in possession of the whole reality, that indefinable something that constitutes the unity ... Now pure logic cannot give us this view of the whole it is to intuition that we must look for it.
Henri Poincare
Image
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
Henri Poincare
Image
One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.
Henri Poincare
Image
What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that it is one that can be understood by the pupils.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.
Henri Poincare
Image
The mathematical facts worthy of being studied are those which, by their analogy with other facts, are capable of leading us to the knowledge of a physical law. They reveal the kinship between other facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another.
Henri Poincare