Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Every
Evil
Effect
Outweighed
Good
Lives
Million
Altogether
Would
War
Average
Maintain
Life
Lost
Increase
Length
Science
Effects
Hardly
Stills
Example
Seriously
Still
Millions
Accounts
Done
Possible
Ten

More quotes by G. H. Hardy

Image
... Philosophy proper is a subject, on the one hand so hopelessly obscure, on the other so astonishingly elementary, that there knowledge hardly counts.
G. H. Hardy
Image
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.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
G. H. Hardy
Image
In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
G. H. Hardy
Image
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
G. H. Hardy
Image
A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied... For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
Image
What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
Image
As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or scholarship candidates, but Fellows of another college.
G. H. Hardy
Image
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.
G. H. Hardy
Image
It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
G. H. Hardy
Image
A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Most people can do nothing at all well
G. H. Hardy
Image
I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
G. H. Hardy
Image
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.
G. H. Hardy
Image
No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game
G. H. Hardy
Image
If I could prove by logic that you would die in five minutes, I should be sorry you were going to die, but my sorrow would be very much mitigated by pleasure in the proof.
G. H. Hardy
Image
All analysts spend half their time hunting through the literature for inequalities which they want to use and cannot prove.
G. H. Hardy