A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.

"I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply the notes of our observations."

Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947) http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/science/