In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a: the rest we don't call y, as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical language has great advantages over the common language.
Loci: Convergence
Mathematical Quotations
Our library of quotations is organized alphabetically by surname of the author.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
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.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries.
Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)
[In reply to Olbers' attempt in 1816 to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem:] I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never satisfied man is so strange if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretched out his arms for others.
Gay, John
Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view.
Gibbs, Josiah Willard (1839-1903)
Mathematics is a language.
Gibbs, Josiah Willard (1839 - 1903)
One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.
Gilbert, W. S. (1836 - 1911)
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; in short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
Glaisher, J.W.
The mathematician requires tact and good taste at every step of his work, and he has to learn to trust to his own instinct to distinguish between what is really worthy of his efforts and what is not.