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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.

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
Thinking
Minds
Built
Rather
Another
Reality
Shaped
Mind
Prime
Way
Mathematical
Think
Logic

More quotes by G. H. Hardy

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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.
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A month's intelligent instruction in the theory of numbes ought to be twice as instructive, twice as useful, and at least 10 times as entertaining as the same amount of 'calculus for engineers'.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
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The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
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Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
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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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For my part, it is difficult for me to say what I owe to Ramanujan - his originality has been a constant source of suggestion to me ever since I knew him, and his death is one of the worst blows I have ever had.
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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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Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
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I wrote a great deal during the next ten [early] years,but very little of any importance there are not more than four or five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.
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A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
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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.
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