Quote

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

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
Humans
Useful
Inequalities
Life
Accounts
Accentuate
Destruction
Promotes
Development
Distribution
Wealth
Existing
Existence
Tends
Science
Inequality
Human
Directly

More quotes by 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
In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Good work is not done by 'humble' men
G. H. Hardy
Image
Greek mathematics is the real thing. The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand... So Greek mathematics is 'permanent', more permanent even than Greek literature.
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
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
G. H. Hardy
Image
The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
G. H. Hardy
Image
The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
G. H. Hardy
Image
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
Image
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.
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
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
Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
G. H. Hardy
Image
The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
G. H. Hardy
Image
No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years.
G. H. Hardy
Image
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.
G. H. Hardy
Image
The seriousness of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the significance of the mathematical ideas which it connects.
G. H. Hardy
Image
A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
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