Henri Poincare Science Quotations

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

Science is built up of 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.

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.

A very small cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we cannot ignore, and we say that this effect is due to chance.

Deviner avant de démontrer! Ai-je besoin de rappeler que c'est ainsi que se sont faites toutes les découvertes importantes.

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

When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.

A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.

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

The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.

Pure logic could never lead us to anything but tautologies; it can create nothing new; not from it alone can any science issue.

It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover.

Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.