John

“Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances suggest the contrary, but there are easy explanations. Music can be used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot; and musical incapacity is recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

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

“Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.”
― 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