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It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.

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
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Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare
Poincare
Logic
Mathematics
Prove
Create
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Criticize
Good
Intuition
Math
Discover

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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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
Henri Poincare
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All of mathematics is a tale about groups.
Henri Poincare
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Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
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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.
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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Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.
Henri Poincare
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Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
Henri Poincare
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The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.
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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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
Henri Poincare
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Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new it alone can give us certainty.
Henri Poincare
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A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.
Henri Poincare
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Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.
Henri Poincare
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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.
Henri Poincare
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Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
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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Logic sometimes makes monsters. For half a century we have seen a mass of bizarre functions which appear to be forced to resemble as little as possible honest functions which serve some purpose.
Henri Poincare
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When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.
Henri Poincare
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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.
Henri Poincare