Quote

In mathematics there are no true controversies.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Carl Friedrich Gauss
Age: 77 †
Born: 1777
Born: April 30
Died: 1855
Died: February 23
Astronomer
Geodesist
Geophysicist
Mathematician
Physicist
Science Writer
Statistician
University Teacher
Braunschweig
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
Karl Gauss
C. F. Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauß
Gauß
Carl Friedrich
Gauss
Controversies
Controversy
Mathematics
True

More quotes by Carl Friedrich Gauss

Image
Sin2 φ is odious to me, even though Laplace made use of it should it be feared that sin2 φ might become ambiguous, which would perhaps never occur, or at most very rarely when speaking of sin(φ2), well then, let us write (sin φ)2, but not sin2 φ, which by analogy should signify sin (sin φ)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
The total number of Dirichlet's publications is not large: jewels are not weighed on a grocery scale.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Sophie Germain proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something in the most rigorous and abstract of sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
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.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Theory attracts practice as the magnet attracts iron.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
I protest against the use of infinite magnitude ..., which is never permissible in mathematics.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
In the last two months I have been very busy with my own mathematical speculations, which have cost me much time, without my having reached my original goal. Again and again I was enticed by the frequently interesting prospects from one direction to the other, sometimes even by will-o'-the-wisps, as is not rare in mathematic speculations.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no human can hasten or retard.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
It is always noteworthy that all those who seriously study this science [the theory of numbers] conceive a sort of passion for it.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
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.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
His second motto: Thou, nature, art my goddess to thy laws my services are bound.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
The higher arithmetic presents us with an inexhaustible store of interesting truths - of truths, too, which are not isolated, but stand in a close internal connection, and between which, as our knowledge increases, we are continually discovering new and sometimes wholly unexpected ties.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Image
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.
Carl Friedrich Gauss