Henri Poincare Quotes

To use is necessary. And if you can't be used, then you're useless.

Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest.

I think the purpose of deconstruction is to take something apart and see how it works. If you're not going to put it back together again and watch it go, what's the point?

Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.

Some are created for beauty, and some for use; and there are some which one can do without altogether.

Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle. A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it's moving forward towards something.

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration.

As an exercise of the reasoning faculties, pure mathematics is an admirable exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone and does not encumber the student with any exercise of judgment.

The abuse of a thing is no argument against the use of it.

Beauty depends on purpose. It is in the elements best suited to their purpose or aim that beauty shines forth most strongly.

Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.

Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.

Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful.

Eccentricty had flowered into madness.

The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality.

Knowledge has no value except that which can be gained from its application toward some worthy end.

Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

On the dashboard of our family car is a shallow indentation about the size of a paperback book. If you are looking for somewhere to put your sunglasses or spare change, it is the obvious place, and it works extremely well, I must say, so long as the car is not actually moving. However, as soon as you put the car in motion ... everything slides off ... It can hold nothing that has not been nailed to it. So I ask you: what then is it for?

The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing.

Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.

Tool - something with a use on one end and a grasp on the other end.

Cut out doors and windows for the house. The holes make it useful.