We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle of understanding and navigating the process of achieving one's goals, despite having the outcomes in mind.
In this quote, Carl Friedrich Gauss expresses the dilemma of being aware of the results he aims to achieve, yet being uncertain about the path needed to reach those results. It captures the essence of planning, the importance of the journey, and the challenges inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and success. Even great thinkers can find themselves at a crossroads between their ambitions and the methods required to turn those ambitions into reality.
Themes
ResultsGoalsProcessSuccessJourney
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech to emphasize perseverance in reaching goals.
More from Carl Friedrich Gauss
All quotes βI protest against the use of infinite magnitude ..., which is never permissible in mathematics.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
Mathematics is the queen of sciences and number theory is 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.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
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.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
Similar quotes
Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.
Atul GawandeRead
Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.
Bertrand RussellRead
There are strong reasons for believing that space goes on beyond the limits of our observational horizon. There are strong reasons because if you look in opposite directions, conditions are the same to within one part in 100,000. So if we are part of some finite structure then, if the gradient is so shallow, it is likely to go on much further.
Martin ReesRead
Among physicists, I'm respected I hope.
Stephen HawkingRead
The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Stone tools are fossilized human behavior.
Louis LeakeyRead