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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.
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
Subject
Subjects
Astonishingly
Philosophy
Hopelessly
Hand
Elementary
Knowledge
Counts
Hands
Obscure
Hardly
Proper
More quotes by G. H. Hardy
In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
G. H. Hardy
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
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
I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
G. H. Hardy
No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.
G. H. Hardy
Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
G. H. Hardy
A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among real mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as useless as the theory of numbers.
G. H. Hardy
The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
G. H. Hardy
Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
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
As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or scholarship candidates, but Fellows of another college.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
The seriousness of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the significance of the mathematical ideas which it connects.
G. H. Hardy
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.
G. H. Hardy
