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Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer.

Henri Poincare

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Henri Poincare
Age: 58 †
Born: 1854
Born: April 29
Died: 1912
Died: July 17
Astronomer
Engineer
Mathematician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Physicist
Researcher
Topologist
University Teacher
Le Cateau
Jules Henri Poincaré
Poincaré
Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare
Poincare
Asks
Ridiculous
Even
Though
Consider
Would
Rain
Eclipse
Think
Chance
Praying
Storms
Thinking
Natural
Seem
Showers
People
Science
Fine
Weather
Seems
Quite
Storm
Come
Prayer
Pray
Many

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations among objects they are indifferent to the replacement of objects by others as long the relations don't change. Matter is not important, only form interests them.
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We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
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In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind.
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Mathematicians do not deal in objects, but in relations between objects thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant: they are interested in form only.
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The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.
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Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
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Point set topology is a disease from which the human race will soon recover.
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The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.
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If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living
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Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and subconscious.
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How is error possible in mathematics?
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Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think
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Zero is the number of objects that satisfy a condition that is never satisfied. But as never means in no case, I do not see that any progress has been made.
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Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
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What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that it is one that can be understood by the pupils.
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Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
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It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
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One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.
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...the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know
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A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.
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