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It is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life.

G. H. Hardy

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G. H. Hardy
Age: 70 †
Born: 1877
Born: February 7
Died: 1947
Died: December 1
Academic
Mathematician
University Teacher
Cranleigh
Surrey
G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy
Godfrey·Harold·Hardy
Godfrey Harold
Good
Lives
Million
Altogether
Would
War
Average
Maintain
Life
Lost
Increase
Length
Science
Effects
Hardly
Stills
Example
Seriously
Still
Millions
Accounts
Done
Possible
Ten
Every
Evil
Effect
Outweighed

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The mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. ... [Whereas] the physicist's reality, whatever it may be, has few or none of the attributes which common sense ascribes instinctively to reality. A chair may be a collection of whirling electrons.
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Good work is not done by 'humble' men
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It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
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Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
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Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.
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As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or scholarship candidates, but Fellows of another college.
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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
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Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.
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I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
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A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities has to distinguish two different questions. The first is whether the work which he does is worth doing and the second is why he does it (whatever its value may be).
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317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.
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I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.
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Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
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I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among real mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as useless as the theory of numbers.
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A science or an art may be said to be useful if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way.
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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.
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Perhaps five or even ten per cent of men can do something rather well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.
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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.
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The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
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