Carl Friedrich Gauss

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and arithmetic the queen of mathematics. She often condescends to render service to astronomy and other natural sciences, but in all relations, she is entitled to the first rank.

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

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

The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.

If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries.

You have no idea how much poetry there is in a table of logarithms.

I confess that I am not a friend of the word 'rigor' in mathematics. I prefer 'clarity'.

I have been able to make but little progress in the theory of numbers, and it is only by the most strenuous efforts that I have succeeded in advancing a few steps.

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal themselves in their full beauty only to those who have the courage to pursue them.

The great difficulty in the theory of numbers is to find the proof of a theorem after one has discovered it.

The object of pure mathematics is the discovery of the laws of nature.

I have often said that if I had not been a mathematician, I should have been a linguist.

The value of a problem is not so much in coming up with the answer as in the process of working it out.

I am more and more convinced that the principles of geometry are not analytic but synthetic.

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

The further we advance in mathematics, the more we discover how much we still have to learn.

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences, and number theory is the queen of mathematics.

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but capability, which abides with us.

When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.

Finally, two days ago, I succeeded—not on account of my hard work, but rather through good luck. That is the way it is with all discoveries. One finds something after a long period of time, and then sees that it could have been found much earlier.