A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
G. H. HardyThe primes are the raw material out of which we have to build arithmetic, and Euclid's theorem assures us that we have plenty of material for the task.
G. H. HardyIf a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity of age.
G. H. Hardy