71 Quotes by Carl Friedrich Gauss

In mathematics there are no true controversies.

That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.

I protest against the use of infinite magnitude ..., which is never permissible in mathematics.

Ask her to wait a moment I am almost done.

Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.

You have no idea, how much poetry there is in the calculation of a table of logarithms!

Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no human can hasten or retard.

By explanation the scientist understands nothing except the reduction to the least and simplest basic laws possible, beyond which he cannot go, but must plainly demand them; from them however he deduces the phenomena absolutely completely as necessary.

A great part of its [higher arithmetic] theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.