“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)
“… there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)
“A painter makes patterns with shapes and colours, a poet with words. A painting may embody an ‘idea’, but the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant. In poetry, ideas count for a good deal more; but, […] the importance of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated: '… Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it.' [In poetry, ] the poverty of the ideas seems hardly to affect the beauty of the verbal pattern.”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)
“If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.”G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's ApologyA Mathematician's Apology (1941)