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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

Henri Poincare

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Henri Poincare
Age: 58 †
Born: 1854
Born: April 29
Died: 1912
Died: July 17
Astronomer
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Mathematician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Physicist
Researcher
Topologist
University Teacher
Le Cateau
Jules Henri Poincaré
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Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare
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Mathematics
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Art
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More quotes by Henri Poincare

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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.
Henri Poincare
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Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
Henri Poincare
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Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
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Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
Henri Poincare
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Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Henri Poincare
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Ideas rose in clouds I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.
Henri Poincare
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Pure logic could never lead us to anything but tautologies it can create nothing new not from it alone can any science issue.
Henri Poincare
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Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures.
Henri Poincare
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What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
Henri Poincare
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The subliminal self is in no way inferior to the conscious self. It knows how to choose and to divine.
Henri Poincare
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I entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At that moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with non-Euclidean geometry.
Henri Poincare
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We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
Henri Poincare
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For a long time the objects that mathematicians dealt with were mostly ill-defined one believed one knew them, but one represented them with the senses and imagination but one had but a rough picture and not a precise idea on which reasoning could take hold.
Henri Poincare
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Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
Henri Poincare
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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.
Henri Poincare
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Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
Henri Poincare
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Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think
Henri Poincare
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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.
Henri Poincare
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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
Henri Poincare
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How is it that there are so many minds that are incapable of understanding mathematics? ... the skeleton of our understanding, ... and actually they are the majority. ... We have here a problem that is not easy of solution, but yet must engage the attention of all who wish to devote themselves to education.
Henri Poincare