Sophie Germain Proved To The World That

Does The Pursuit Of Truth Give You As Much Pleasure As Before? Surely It Is Not The Knowing But The Learning, Not The Possessing But The Acquiring, Not The Being-there But The Getting There That Afford The Greatest Satisfaction. If I Have Exhausted Something, I Leave It In Order To Go Again Into The Dark. Thus Is That Insatiable Man So Strange: When He Has Completed A Structure It Is Not In Order To Dwell In It Comfortably, But To Start Another.

A Great Part Of Its Theories Derives An Additional Charm From The Peculiarity That Important Propositions, With The Impress Of Simplicity On Them, Are Often Easily Discovered By Induction, And Yet Are Of So Profound A Character That We Cannot Find The Demonstrations Till After Many Vain Attempts; And Even Then, When We Do Succeed, It Is Often By Some Tedious And Artificial Process, While The Simple Methods May Long Remain Concealed.

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.

In Mathematics There Are No True Controversies.

It May Be True, That Men, Who Are Mere Mathematicians, Have Certain Specific Shortcomings, But That Is Not The Fault Of Mathematics, For It Is Equally True Of Every Other Exclusive Occupation.