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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
Hardly
Proper
Subject
Subjects
Astonishingly
Philosophy
Hopelessly
Hand
Elementary
Knowledge
Counts
Hands
Obscure

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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 was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.
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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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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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I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
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No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game
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Good work is not done by 'humble' men
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Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
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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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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.
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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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The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
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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.
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Most people can do nothing at all well
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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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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 mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
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The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
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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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Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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