Mathematics is the queen of the sciences - Carl Friedrich Gauss

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

I will add that I have recently received from Hungary a little paper on non-Euclidean geometry in which I rediscover all my own ideas and results worked out with great elegance... The writer is a very young Austrian officer, the son of one of my early friends, with whom I often discussed the subject in 1798, although my ideas were at that time far removed from the development and maturity which they have received through the original reflections of this young man. I consider the young geometer J. Bolyai a genius of the first rank.

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our mind, space has a reality outside of our mind, so that we cannot prescribe its laws a priori.