Henri Poincare Quotes

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

How is it that there are so many minds that are incapable of understanding mathematics? ... the skeleton of our understanding, ... and actually they are the majority. ... We have here a problem that is not easy of solution, but yet must engage the attention of all who wish to devote themselves to education.

I have a massive divide between being a competent human being and being completely hopeless, when it comes to logic.

There is coming an era for people with a mathematical state of mind

Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.

The mind which is most capable of receiving impressions is very often the least capable of drawing conclusions.

Although I am not stupid, the mathematical side of my brain is like dumb notes upon a damaged piano.

The mind is a powerful thing and most people don't use it properly.

Now, you'll hear people call here on my show claiming they used to be lib and they've changed their minds. That happens, but it happens naturally. It's not because I've focused on trying to persuade people. I think while it's a noble objective to try to help people to see things the right way, this is a different psychological collection of human beings, and they are walled off from anything that's not them.

You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don't like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.

You don't have to be a genius to find the hidden potential deep in your mind.

I'm really paying attention. People make up their minds late.

The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

People don't very much like things that are beautiful - they are so far from their nasty little minds.

Americans are not terribly intelligent people. They need to read important things several times.

Faith never requires us to crucify our minds or deny our senses.

I realized that, to a large degree, I had kept my rational mind at bay my whole life. I just acted on intuition in terms of how I related to life. At some point, my rational mind started creeping in, and it would not shut up. I finally had to address it and confront it. I think most intelligent people, at a younger age than I have, begin to question some of the fundamental assumptions our society promotes. But me, I just rejected it without even considering it.

The mind of man is capable of anything.

The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not.

Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart. Never. Ever. 'You can come down the evolutionary ladder,' Chon has observed to Ben and O; 'you can't climb up.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

It is shocking that young people should be addling their brains over mere logical subtleties in Euclid's Elements, trying to understand the proof of one obvious fact in terms of something equally .. obvious.

We measure minds by their stature; it would be better to esteem them by their beauty.