G.H. Hardy

Quotes

• “It seems that mathematical ideas are arranged somehow in strata, the ideas in each stratum being linked by a complex of ...”
• “I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theore...”
• “[Regarding mathematics,] there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and...”
• “[I was advised] to read Jordan's 'Cours d'analyse'; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that rem...”
• “[It] is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. Fo...”
• “The geometer offers to the physicist a whole set of maps from which to choose. One map, perhaps, will fit the facts bett...”
• “The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the word...”
• “Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit t...”
• “In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be said for a study whic...”
• “Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. “Immorta...”
• “It (proof by contradiction) is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a paw...”
• “The play is independent of the pages on which it is printed, and ‘pure geometries’ are independent of lecture rooms, or ...”
• “The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful—‘important’ if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and ‘serio...”
• “A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than their, it is ...”
• “A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of poems. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is be...”