Henri Poincare Quotes

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

There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

I'd rather see folks doubt what's true than accept what isn't.

He that believes all misseth; he that believes nothing, hits not.

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

I do not believe in Belief.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

My son, I do not say these are foals and those asses, these little monkeys and those great baboons, as you would have me do. As I told you from the first, I regard them as earth's heroes. But I do not wish to believe them without cause, nor to accept those propositions whose antitheses (as you must have understood if you are not both blind and deaf) are so compellingly true.

It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything.

I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin;

Nothing should be taken for granted, even if everybody believes it.

I respect and believe skeptics.

As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""