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

Henri Poincare

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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
Often
Truth
Also
Consoling
Cruel
Delusion
Wonder
Whether

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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Zero is the number of objects that satisfy a condition that is never satisfied. But as never means in no case, I do not see that any progress has been made.
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It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
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What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
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Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
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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.
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Intuition is more important to discovery than logic.
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Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
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...the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know
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Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.
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But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something.
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Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
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Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
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In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind. Now, they invent them deliberately just to invalidate our ancestors' reasoning, and that is all they are ever going to get out of them.
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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
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Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
Henri Poincare
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The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.
Henri Poincare
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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.
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Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
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It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
Henri Poincare
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Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer.
Henri Poincare