If, then, a phenomenon admits of a complete mechanical explanation, it will admit of an infinity of others, that will render an account equally well … - Henri Poincaré

It's through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.

It follows from this that sight and touch could not have given us the notion of space without the aid of the 'muscular sense.

For fifteen days I strove to prove that there could not be any functions like those I have since called Fuchsian functions. I was then very ignorant; every day I seated myself at my work table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results. One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. By the morning I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those which come from the hypergeometric series; I had only to write out the results, which took but a few hours.