Top 15 Carl Friedrich Gauss Quotes

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

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences

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

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

Few, But Pure.

I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which is never permissible in mathematics. Infinity is merely a way of speaking

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

Pauca sed matura. (Few, but ripe.)

The history of the apple is too absurd. Whether the apple fell or not, how can any one believe that such a discovery could in that way be accelerated or retarded? Undoubtedly, the occurrence was something of this sort. There comes to Newton a stupid, importunate man, who asks him how he hit upon his great discovery. When Newton had convinced himself what a noodle he had to do with, and wanted to get rid of the man, he told him that an apple fell on his nose; and this made the matter quite clear to the man, and he went away satisfied.

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

Letter to Bessel (1826), quoted in Dunnington, G. Waldo. "Gauss, His Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, and His Contemporaries in the Institut de France." National Mathematics Magazine 9.7 (1935): 187-192.

Bei Gegenstdnden mit denen ich mich noch nicht lange beschaftigt habe, bin ich gegen meine eigenen Ansichten, zumal wenn sie einem Laplace widersprechen, misstrauisch und nehme gern die von anderen entgegen. ["I am suspicious of my own views on subjects with which I have not long occupied myself, and gladly accept those of others, especially when my views contradict one of Laplace."]

Procreare jucundum, sed parturire molestum ["to beget is pleasant, but to give birth is painful"]

[<nowiki/>Abraham Gotthelf Kästner is] the best mathematician among poets and the best poet among mathematicians

Gauss's aim was always to give his investigations the form of perfect works of art. He would not rest sooner and never gave a piece of work to the public until he had given it the perfection of form he desired for it. A good building should not show its scaffolding when completed, he used to say. In his demonstrations he used almost entirely the synthetic method, which he had come to prize through his studies of Archimedes and Newton. It is distinguished from the analytic method by its brevity and comprehensiveness. But the road leading to the discovery remains veiled; and indeed it often seems that Gauss frequently and intentionally turned aside from the road that led to mere instruction.