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Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or the desire to create and that is apt to happen to a mathematician rather soon. It is a pity, but in that case he does not matter a great deal anyhow, and it would be silly to bother about him.

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
Bother
Much
Rather
Soon
Draw
Would
Desire
Subjects
Lost
Deal
Pity
Happens
Deals
Silly
Anyhow
Power
Cases
Draws
Contemplative
Doe
Create
Mathematics
Consolation
Matter
Happen
Subject
Mathematician
Great
Creative
Case

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The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
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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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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 believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our creations, are simply the notes of our observations.
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The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
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In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be said for a study which did not begin with Pythagoras, and will not end with Einstein, but is the oldest and the youngest of all.
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No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game
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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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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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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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Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.
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... Philosophy proper is a subject, on the one hand so hopelessly obscure, on the other so astonishingly elementary, that there knowledge hardly counts.
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The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
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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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The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
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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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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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