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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.

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
Reality
Existed
Feels
External
Even
Sees
Would
Independent
World
Completely
Forever
Conceives
Science
Inaccessible
Spirit
Impossibility

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures.
Henri Poincare
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Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?
Henri Poincare
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Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
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Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
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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 far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
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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Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?
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.
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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.
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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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In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind.
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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Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
Henri Poincare
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But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something.
Henri Poincare
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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
Henri Poincare
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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.
Henri Poincare
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Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.
Henri Poincare
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Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
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