John

“No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. … Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; … [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. … A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. I”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“A mathematical proof should resemble a simple and clear-cut constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. “Immortality” may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology