“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)
“No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)
“I still say to myself when I am depressed and find myself forced to listen to pompous and tiresome people "Well, I have done one thing you could never have done, and that is to have collaborated with Littlewood and Ramanujan on something like equal terms."”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)
“A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)