"Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much,……" — G. H. Hardy
"Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game."
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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.
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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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I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly,…
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More Absurdum Quotes
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