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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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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
Useful
Function
Days
Mind
Something
People
Invented

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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.
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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.
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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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Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new it alone can give us certainty.
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It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.
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Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
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The subliminal self is in no way inferior to the conscious self. It knows how to choose and to divine.
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Intuition is more important to discovery than logic.
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Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
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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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Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think
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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?
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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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The mathematical facts worthy of being studied are those which, by their analogy with other facts, are capable of leading us to the knowledge of a physical law. They reveal the kinship between other facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another.
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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.
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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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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
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Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures.
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Mathematicians are born, not made.
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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.
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