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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

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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
Since
Recognized
Science
Generally
May
Reasons
Reason
Mathematics
Praiseworthy
Needs
None
Propose
Good
Forward
Profitable
Told
Apology
Study
Studies

More quotes by G. H. Hardy

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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 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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Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.
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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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Most people can do nothing at all well
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Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
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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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Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
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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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... 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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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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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
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Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
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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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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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Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.
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Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton and Gauss remain in the Hobbs class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They had better be moved from now on into the Bradman class.
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The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
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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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