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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.

G. H. Hardy

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G. H. Hardy
Age: 70 †
Born: 1877
Born: February 7
Died: 1947
Died: December 1
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Cranleigh
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G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy
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Godfrey Harold
Mathematical
Math
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Patterns
Mathematics
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More quotes by G. H. Hardy

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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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I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
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Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: Yes, up to isomorphism.
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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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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
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Most people can do nothing at all well
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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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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
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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.
G. H. Hardy
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A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
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The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
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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.
G. H. Hardy
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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.
G. H. Hardy
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I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.
G. H. Hardy
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The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
G. H. Hardy
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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 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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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.
G. H. Hardy
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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.
G. H. Hardy
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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