"The scientist does not study nature because it……" — Henri Poincare
"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp."
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Henri Poincare
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107 Quotes by Henri Poincare
Henri Poincare has 107 quotes on this site.
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Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no…
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It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover.
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In one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is a necessity that imposes itself on…
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It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too…
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Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws…
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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…
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I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the…
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It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make…
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Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects.
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What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
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It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
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