Quote

Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.

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
Speak
Facts

More quotes by Henri Poincare

Image
One geometry cannot be more true than another it can only be more convenient.
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
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
The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematicians are born, not made.
Henri Poincare
Image
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.
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
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.
Henri Poincare
Image
In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind.
Henri Poincare
Image
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
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 the relations between objects.
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
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
What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
Henri Poincare
Image
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.
Henri Poincare
Image
Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
Image
How is error possible in mathematics?
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