Carl Friedrich Gauss Men Quotations

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.

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.

[On Sophie Germain] When a person of the sex which, according to our customs and prejudices, must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men... succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of [number theory], then without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius.

No contradictions will arise as long as Finite Man does not mistake the infinite for something fixed, as long as he is not led by an acquired habit of mind to regard the infinite as something bounded.

Does the pursuit of truth give you as much pleasure as before? Surely it is not the knowing but the learning, not the possessing but the acquiring, not the being-there but the getting there that afford the greatest satisfaction. If I have exhausted something, I leave it in order to go again into the dark. Thus is that insatiable man so strange: when he has completed a structure it is not in order to dwell in it comfortably, but to start another.

Response, when asked how he came upon his theorems.