Quote

Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. Immortality may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.

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
Mean
Dies
Immortality
Word
Mathematical
Chance
Math
Whatever
Remembered
Language
Silly
Aeschylus
May
Mathematics
Archimedes
Best
Forgotten
Languages
Ideas
Probably
Mathematician

More quotes by G. H. Hardy

Image
A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
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
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
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
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
Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
G. H. Hardy
Image
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.
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
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
Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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
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
A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.
G. H. Hardy
Image
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.
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
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.
G. H. Hardy
Image
Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
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 public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
G. H. Hardy