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

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Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
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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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Good work is not done by 'humble' men
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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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Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.
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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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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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All analysts spend half their time hunting through the literature for inequalities which they want to use and cannot prove.
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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.
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Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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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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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 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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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 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.
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Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
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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.
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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
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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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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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