"I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery……" — G. H. Hardy
"I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value."
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G. H. Hardy
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76 Quotes by G. H. Hardy
G. H. Hardy has 76 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer…
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[Regarding mathematics,] there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy. This…
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A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original…
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A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of…
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No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least…
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Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a…
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As history proves abundantly, mathematical achievement, whatever its intrinsic worth, is the most enduring of all.
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Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.
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Greek mathematics is the real thing. The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand... So Greek mathematics…
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I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.
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I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the…
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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
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More All Quotes
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Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally…
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Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of…
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We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and…
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Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
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A friend to all is a friend to none.
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