Henri Poincare Quotes

The critical mind is the creative mind.

It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Intellectual curiosity drove Einstein to some of the world's most important discoveries.

The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things.

My characteristics as a scientist stem from a non-conformist upbringing, a sense of being something of an outsider, and looking for different perceptions in everything from novels, to art to experimental results. I like complexity and am delighted by the unexpected. Ideas interest me.

As we know from the work of certain fundamental physicists, people like Einstein were very dependent upon conjuring up visual images in order to imagine things which otherwise were not easily formulated.

My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected.

We have to think big. We have to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other people imagine and lead us down what paths they want to take us. Sometimes they're very limited in the way their ideas are constructed. We need to imagine much more broadly. That's the work of a writer, and more writers should look at it.

Science requires speculation, creativity, and wild ideas.

Creativity is a catchall term for a variety of distinct thought processes.

So much of what we said sounded crazy, yet none of it was false... as if two theoretical physicists stood on stage to say that when we travel near lightspeed, we get younger than nontravellers; that a mile of space next to the sun is differnt than a mile of space next to the earth because the sun-mile space is curved more than the the earth-mile. Silly ideas, worth the admission price in smiles, but they're true. Is high-energy physics interesting because it's true or because it's crazy?

But how shall I get ideas? ''Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind - Act!

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

For a physicist mathematics is not just a tool by means of which phenomena can be calculated, it is the main source of concepts and principles by means of which new theories can be created.

Imagination plus innovation equals realization.

A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.

I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.

The pioneer scientist must have "a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination."

Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five

You collect as much information as you can and then you put it into the mulberry of your mind and hope that you come up with a decent wine. Sometimes you do; sometimes you don't.

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind.

[Topher Grace] is thought about what he's going to do and he has a lot of ideas. So there's that.

No man ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination.