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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

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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
Five
Proof
Dies
Logic
Going
Mathematics
Much
Sorry
Would
Sorrow
Prove
Minutes
Pleasure
Mitigated

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The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
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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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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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Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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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 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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I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.
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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 case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
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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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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
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A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
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Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.
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Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
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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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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.
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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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All analysts spend half their time hunting through the literature for inequalities which they want to use and cannot prove.
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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
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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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