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One day he said: For the soul there is a satisfaction of a higher type; the material is not at all necessary. Whether I apply mathematics to a couple of clods of dirt, which we call planets, or to purely arithmetical problems, it's just the same; the latter have only a higher charm for me.

— Carl Friedrich Gauss Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955)

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More quotes by Carl Friedrich Gauss

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

The Mind and the Eye (1954)

All the measurements in the world do not balance one theorem by which the science of eternal truths is actually advanced.

The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics and nothing else can replace it.

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

But in our opinion truths of this kind should be drawn from notions rather than from notations.

About the proof of Wilson's theorem. Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Carl Friedrich Gauss (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.