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 PoincareAll that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only thoughts, and all the words we use to speak of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something other than thought is therefore an affirmation which can have no meaning.
Henri PoincareLater generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
Henri PoincareIn one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is a necessity that imposes itself on the most circumspect observer.
Henri PoincareSo is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn't that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist's eye? Far from that, without this language most of the initimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.
Henri Poincare