Quote

It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.

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
Foreseen
Foresee
Certainty
Better
Without
Even
Foreseeing

More quotes by 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
Point set topology is a disease from which the human race will soon recover.
Henri Poincare
Image
But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.
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
Image
Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new it alone can give us certainty.
Henri Poincare
Image
...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
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematicians are born, not made.
Henri Poincare
Image
Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations among objects they are indifferent to the replacement of objects by others as long the relations don't change. Matter is not important, only form interests them.
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
Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
Henri Poincare
Image
One geometry cannot be more true than another it can only be more convenient.
Henri Poincare
Image
Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?
Henri Poincare
Image
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
Henri Poincare
Image
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
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
Pure logic could never lead us to anything but tautologies it can create nothing new not from it alone can any science issue.
Henri Poincare
Image
But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something.
Henri Poincare
Image
Ideas rose in clouds I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.
Henri Poincare