Henri Poincaré Short Quotes

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Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.

Henri Poincaré
Science is a rule of action which is successful...

Henri Poincaré
Space is only a word that we have believed a thing.

Henri Poincaré
Principles are conventions and definitions in disguise.

Henri Poincaré
Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

Henri Poincaré
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

Henri Poincaré
If there were no solid bodies in nature, there would be no geometry.

Henri Poincaré
Scientific theories are like empires, they are not certain of the morrow.

Henri Poincaré
If science is feared, it is above all because it cannot give us happiness.

Henri Poincaré
Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

Henri Poincaré
One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

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

Henri Poincaré
Mathematician ought not to be for the physicist a simple provider of formulae.

Henri Poincaré
The scientific fact is only the crude fact translated into a convenient language.

Henri Poincaré
Sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results.

Henri Poincaré
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre as a disease from which one has recovered.

Henri Poincaré
The very possibility of the science of mathematics seems an insoluble contradiction.

Henri Poincaré
The stars are majestic laboratories, gigantic crucibles, such as no chemist could dream.

Henri Poincaré
To observe is not enough. We must use our observations, and to do that we must generalize.

Henri Poincaré
The search for truth should be the goal of our activities; it is the sole end worthy of them.

Henri Poincaré
We can not know all facts and it is necessary to choose those which are worthy of being known.

Henri Poincaré
It is not sufficient for a theory to affirm no false relations; it must not hide true relations.

Henri Poincaré
Man, then, can not be happy through science, but to-day he can be much less be happy without it.

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

Henri Poincaré
Scientific truth, which is demonstrated, can in no way be likened to moral truth, which is felt.

Henri Poincaré
Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.

Henri Poincaré
The true method of forecasting the future of mathematics lies in the study of its history and its present state.

Henri Poincaré
To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.

Henri Poincaré
The facts of geometry are naught else than the facts of algebra and analytical geometry expressed in another language.

Henri Poincaré
The importance of a fact is known by its fruits, that is to say, by the amount of thought which it enables us to economize.

Henri Poincaré