140 Quotes by Henri Poincare

"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."

"Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts."

"Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means . . . ."

"But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something."

"All that we can hope from these inspirations, which are the fruits of unconscious work, is to obtain points of departure for such calculations. As for the calculations themselves, they must be made in the second period of conscious work which follows the inspiration, and in which the results of the inspiration are verified and the consequences deduced.‎"

"The task of the educator is to make the child's spirit pass again where its forefathers have gone, moving rapidly through certain stages but suppressing none of them. In this regard, the history of science must be our guide."

"Chance ... must be something more than the name we give to our ignorance."

"For a long time the objects that mathematicians dealt with were mostly ill-defined; one believed one knew them, but one represented them with the senses and imagination; but one had but a rough picture and not a precise idea on which reasoning could take hold."

"Thought must never submit, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, save to the facts themselves, because, for thought, submission would mean ceasing to be."

"Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think"