“Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and
outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of
complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And
that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.

The case for my life, then, or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense in which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them.”