Carl Friedrich Gauss

To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings. ”

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori. ”

The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic. ”

I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible. ”

Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes. ”

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it. ”

It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation. ”

When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false. ”

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. ”

I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect. ”