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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).
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
Doe
Second
Distinguish
May
Differences
Activities
Firsts
Existence
Sets
First
Whatever
Justify
Different
Values
Questions
Work
Whether
Activity
Men
Science
Value
Two
Worth
More quotes by G. H. Hardy
Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. Immortality may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.
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The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
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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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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
G. H. Hardy
Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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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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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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I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
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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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... 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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Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.
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What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men.
G. H. Hardy
The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
G. H. Hardy
Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.
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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.
G. H. Hardy