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If we ought not to fear mortal truth, still less should we dread scientific truth. In the first place it can not conflict with ethics? But if science is feared, it is above all because it can give no happiness? Man, then, can not be happy through science but today he can much less be happy without it.

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
Much
Truth
Ought
Men
Give
Happiness
Feared
Still
Happy
Mortal
Today
Less
Dread
Firsts
Fear
Mortals
Without
Science
Scientific
First
Place
Ethics
Giving
Stills
Conflict

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
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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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Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
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In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind. Now, they invent them deliberately just to invalidate our ancestors' reasoning, and that is all they are ever going to get out of them.
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. . . by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
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In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind.
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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
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Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
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All great progress takes place when two sciences come together, and when their resemblance proclaims itself, despite the apparent disparity of their substance.
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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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It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed.
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But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something.
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Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
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It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
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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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Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.
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Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
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It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
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Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
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Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
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