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Most people can do nothing at all well

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
Nothing
People
Wells
Well

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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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Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
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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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Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
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Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or the desire to create and that is apt to happen to a mathematician rather soon. It is a pity, but in that case he does not matter a great deal anyhow, and it would be silly to bother about him.
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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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I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.
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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
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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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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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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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Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
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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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I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
G. H. Hardy
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The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
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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
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Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
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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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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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... 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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