A Quote by Henri Poincare

Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.... The two propositions: "The earth turns round" and "it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round" have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other.

Henri Poincare

Quote Topics

Absolute Convenient Earth Existence Know Mark Meaning More Moves Necessary Nothing Objective Other Propositions Really Refer Round Same Say Space Suppose Than Turns Two Whether Which Would Would Be

Quote Author

Henri Poincare
French - Mathematician
April 29, 1854 - July 17, 1912

Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.

Henri Poincare

The significance of Columbus's discovery was that on a round earth, humanity is more interconnected than on a flat one. On a round earth, the two most distant points are closer together than they are on a flat earth.

Matt Taibbi

The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.

Alexey Leonov

The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality.

George Bernard Shaw

Dilbert: You joined the "Flat Earth Society?" Dogbert: I believe the earth must be flat. There is no good evidence to support the so-called "round earth theory." Dilbert: I think Christopher Columbus would disagree. Dogbert: How convenient that your best witness is dead.

Scott Adams

The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superman is to be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, be true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the Earth on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.

Ferdinand Magellan

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

Ernest Shackleton

Earth walks on Earth, Glittering in gold; Earth goes to Earth, Sooner than it wold; Earth builds on Earth, Palaces and towers; Earth says to Earth, Soon, all shall be ours.

Walter Scott

Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center - an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman's earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.

Archibald MacLeish

The earth is round, all the heavenly bodies are round; they all move on round or elliptical orbits. This same image of circular globe-shaped mini worlds orbiting around each other follows us right down to the microcosmos. We are even aroused by round forms in species propagation related eroticism. Why should I join the straying mass who want to make everything angular? I am going to pursue Galileo Galilei's philosophy: my world is also round.

Luigi Colani

I'd bet almost anything that life from another planet, if formed independently from life on Earth, would be more different from all species of Earth life than any two species of Earth life are from each other.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position-eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still.

Galileo Galilei

The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.