Henri Poincare Quotes

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Henri Poincare

Profession : Mathematician

Birth : April 29, 1854

A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.

Henri Poincare

Thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged.

Henri Poincare

The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.

Henri Poincare

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

Henri Poincare

If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of the same universe at a succeeding moment.

Henri Poincare

Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects.

Henri Poincare

Facts do not speak.

Henri Poincare

If one looks at the different problems of the integral calculus which arise naturally when one wishes to go deep into the different parts of physics, it is impossible not to be struck by the analogies existing.

Henri Poincare

Hypotheses are what we lack the least.

Henri Poincare

It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient.

Henri Poincare

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

Henri Poincare

Science is facts.

Henri Poincare

How is an error possible in mathematics?

Henri Poincare

Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

Henri Poincare

No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does.

Henri Poincare

Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.

Henri Poincare

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

If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that it is governed by the laws.

Henri Poincare