G. H. Hardy Quotes

The Fact Is There Are Few More Popular Subjects Than Mathematics. Most People Have Some Appreciation Of Mathematics, Just As Most People Can Enjoy A Pleasant Tune.

I Do Not Know An Instance Of A Major Mathematical Advance Initiated By A Man Past Fifty

As Littlewood Said To Me Once [of The Ancient Greeks], They Are Not Clever School Boys Or "scholarship Candidates," But "fellows Of Another College."

I Propose To Put Forward An Apology For Mathematics; And I May Be Told That It Needs None, Since There Are Now Few Studies More Generally Recognized, For Good Reasons Or Bad, As Profitable And Praiseworthy.

Bradman Is A Whole Class Above Any Batsman Who Has Ever Lived: If Archimedes, Newton And Gauss Remain In The Hobbs Class, I Have To Admit The Possibility Of A Class Above Them, Which I Find Difficult To Imagine. They Had Better Be Moved From Now On Into The Bradman Class.

It Is A Melancholy Experience For A Professional Mathematician To Find Himself Writing About Mathematics. The Function Of A Mathematician Is To Do Something, To Prove New Theorems, To Add To Mathematics, And Not To Talk About What He Or Other Mathematicians Have Done. Statesmen Despise Publicists, Painters Despise Art-critics, And Physiologists, Physicists, Or Mathematicians Have Usually Similar Feelings: There Is No Scorn More Profound, Or On The Whole More Justifiable, Than That Of The Men Who Make For The Men Who Explain. Exposition, Criticism, Appreciation, Is Work For Second-rate Minds.

If 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.

There Is Always More In One Of Ramanujan's Formulae Than Meets The Eye, As Anyone Who Sets To Work To Verify Those Which Look The Easiest Will Soon Discover. In Some The Interest Lies Very Deep, In Others Comparatively Near The Surface; But There Is Not One Which Is Not Curious And Entertaining.

[regarding Mathematics,] There Are Now Few Studies More Generally Recognized, For Good Reasons Or Bad, As Profitable And Praiseworthy. This May Be True; Indeed It Is Probable, Since The Sensational Triumphs Of Einstein, That Stellar Astronomy And Atomic Physics Are The Only Sciences Which Stand Higher In Popular Estimation.

A Chess Problem Is Simply An Exercise In Pure Mathematics.

Chess Problems Are The Hymn-tunes Of Mathematics.

As History Proves Abundantly, Mathematical Achievement, Whatever Its Intrinsic Worth, Is The Most Enduring Of All.