Henri Poincare Quotes

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion.

It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.

I want to prove you don't need to have academic syntax to be intelligent.

Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.

I possess a strong sense of reason.

The only exercise I excel at is jumping to conclusions.

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.

Though man a thinking being is defined, Few use the grand prerogative of mind. How few think justly of the thinking few! How many never think, who think they do!

Thinking clearly and effectively is the greatest asset of any human being.

My opponent has all the intellectual rigor of an amoeba.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

It turns out that in order to think well, knowledge helps.

Italians think with their heads.

I'm a natural puzzle solver.

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

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.

It is intelligence that brings order, not discipline.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.

Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid.