{
  "type": "quote",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science/it-is-only",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science/it-is-only.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science/it-is-only.md",
  "id": "98262bf9-4b5f-4925-84fe-45e8bf8c9300",
  "slug": "it-is-only",
  "text": "It is only through science and art that civilization is of value. Some have wondered at the formula: science for its own sake; an yet it is as good as life for its own sake, if life is only misery; and even as happiness for its own sake, if we do not believe that all pleasures are of the same quality...\n\nEvery act should have an aim. We must suffer, we must work, we must pay for our place at the game, but this is for seeing's sake; or at the very least that others may one day see.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Henri Poincaré",
    "slug": "henri-poincare",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare"
  },
  "book": {
    "title": "The Value of Science",
    "slug": "the-value-of-science",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science"
  },
  "character": null,
  "chapter": null,
  "chapter_parent": null,
  "page": null,
  "verified": false,
  "original": null,
  "other_languages": [],
  "topics": [
    {
      "name": "science",
      "slug": "science",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science"
    },
    {
      "name": "art",
      "slug": "art",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art"
    }
  ],
  "source": {
    "name": "Wikiquote",
    "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9#Ch._11:_Science_and_Reality",
    "license": {
      "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
      "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
    }
  },
  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:49",
  "more_from_book": [
    {
      "id": "f28edbd2-fdd1-4274-bad8-3e9fa504dc26",
      "slug": "time-and-space",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science/time-and-space",
      "text": "Time and Space … It is not nature which imposes them upon us, it is we who impose them upon nature because we find them convenient.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "time",
          "slug": "time",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/time"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9#Introduction",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-26T07:49:02"
    },
    {
      "id": "c0aeb15f-66f1-4acf-b0b9-25fca02555bc",
      "slug": "the-advance-of-science",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science/the-advance-of-science",
      "text": "The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile or vain.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "science",
          "slug": "science",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9#Introduction",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-26T07:49:02"
    },
    {
      "id": "315e697c-6806-45a2-9520-7e4b5b0e169e",
      "slug": "for-an-aggregate",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/the-value-of-science/for-an-aggregate",
      "text": "For an aggregate of sensations to have become a remembrance capable of classification in time, it must have ceased to be actual, we must have lost the sense of its infinite complexity, otherwise it would have remained present. It must, so to speak, have crystallized around a center of associations of ideas which will be a sort of label. It is only when they have lost all life that we can classify our memories in time as a botanist arranges dried flowers in his herbarium.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "memory",
          "slug": "memory",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9#Ch._2:_The_Measure_of_Time",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-26T07:49:02"
    }
  ]
}
