I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which is never permissible in mathematics. Infinity is merely a way of speaki… - Carl Friedrich Gauss

Even though much error and hypocrisy may often be mixed in such pietistic tendencies, nevertheless I recognize with all my heart the business of a missionary as a highly honorable one in so far as it leads to civilization the still semisavage part of earth s inhabitants. May my son try it for several years.

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."]

There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.