“Time and Space … It is not nature which imposes them upon us, it is we who impose them upon nature because we find them convenient.”
Le temps et l’espace... Ce n’est pas la nature qui nous les impose, c’est nous qui les imposons à la nature parce que nous les trouvons commodes.
Introduction, p. 13
The Value of Science (1905)
Original
Le temps et l’espace… Ce n’est pas la nature qui nous les impose, c’est nous qui les imposons à la nature parce que nous les trouvons commodes.
The Value of Science (1905)
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Henri Poincaré 49
French mathematician, physicist, engineer, and philosopher … 1854–1912Related quotes
“There are laws which the stone imposes upon us.”
Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 46.

“What is imposed on us by birth and environment is what we are called upon to overcome.”
Part I, p. 28
A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

As quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 9
Posthumous quotes
"That Old Birds are not to be Caught with Chaff".
Sketches from Life (1846)
Context: The starched matron is fain to put faith in the compliment which in her day of youth and grace she knew to be nonsense.... If her mirror will not admit of this she has other resources; she has sage counsel, admirable judgment, perfect knowledge of the world.... Tell her she is not to be imposed upon, and you impose upon her effectually. Admire her penetration, and you will not find her impenetrable.

Conservative Political Action Committee speech http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/02/marco-rubios-cpac-speech-the-t.html, (19 February 2010)
2010s, 2010
Context: These terrorists aren't trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to defeat radical Islamic terrorism. We will punish — we will punish their allies, like Iran — and we will stand with our allies, like Israel.

1850s, West India Emancipation (1857)
Context: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. [... ] Men might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Second Part.
Second Part of Narrative