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

The play is independent of the pages on which it is printed, and 'pure geometries' are independent of lecture rooms, [rough blackboard drawings] or of any other detail of the physical world.
This is the point of view of a pure mathematician. Applied mathematicians, mathematical physicists... take a different view... preoccupied with the physical world itself, which also has its structure or pattern. ...We may be able to trace a ...resemblance between the two sets of relations, and then the pure geometry will become interesting to physicists; it will give us ...a map which 'fits the facts' ...The geometer offers ...a whole set of maps from which to choose.

I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years.