“The beauty of a mathematical theorem depends a great deal on its seriousness, as even in poetry the beauty of a line may depend to some extent on the significance of the ideas which it contains.” — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“The Greeks were the first mathematicians who are still ‘real’ to us to-day. Oriental mathematics may be an interesting curiosity, but Greek mathematics is the real thing. The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand: as Littlewood said to me once, they are not clever schoolboys or ‘scholarship candidates’, but ‘Fellows of another college’. So Greek mathematics… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share
“If the theory of numbers could be employed for any practical and obviously honourable purpose, if it could be turned directly to the furtherance of human happiness or the relief of human suffering, as physiology and even chemistry can, then surely neither Gauss nor any other mathematician would have been so foolish as to decry or regret such applications. But… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share
“Even a pure mathematician may find his appreciation of this geometry [applied geometry] quickened, since there is no mathematician so pure that he feels… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“Immortality is often ridiculous or cruel: few of us would have chosen to be Og or Ananias or Gallio. Even in mathematics, history sometimes… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“One rather curious conclusion emerges, that pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied. ... For what is useful above all… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“It is the dull and elementary parts of applied mathematics, as it is the dull and elementary parts of pure mathematics, that work for… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“The seriousness of a theorem, of course, does not lie in its consequences, which are merely the evidence for its seriousness.” — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“I had better say something here about this question of age, since it is particularly important for mathematicians. No mathematician should ever allow himself… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“I still say to myself when I am depressed, and find myself forced to listen to pompous and tiresome people, 'Well, I have done… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“The beauty of a mathematical theorem depends a great deal on its seriousness, as even in poetry the beauty of a line may depend… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image
“The mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. This may seem a paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the… — G.H. Hardy Copy Share Image