Quotessence
Home / Authors / G. H. Hardy
G. H. Hardy

G. H. Hardy Quotes

Mathematician

Filter quotes by topic

AllMathematicsScienceMathematicianMathematicalMenIfsMathMayMath And ScienceShould

Famous G. H. Hardy Quotes

“It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.”

MenWritingMindArtDoneWholeFeelingsHe ManProveCriticismFunctionMathematicsAddProfoundCriticsRateAppreciationPainterMelancholyDespiseMathematicianPhysicistScornStatesmenTheoremsSecond RatePublicistsArt Critic
Book:A Mathematician's Apology
Create image

“Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject; no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or the desire to create; and that is apt to happen to a mathematician rather soon. It is a pity, but in that case he does not matter a great deal anyhow, and it would be silly to bother about him.”

DoeMatterHappensWould BeDesireLostDealsCasesCreativeSubjectsDrawsMathematicsSillyPityBotherMathematicianConsolationContemplativeBeing Silly
Book:A Mathematician's Apology
Create image

“I remember once going to see him [Ramanujan] when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways."”

WayTwoDifferentRememberLyingInterestingNumbersMathematicsIllMathematicalDifferent WaysDullSmallestVery InterestingTaxiCabCubesOmenRamanujanTaxi Cabs
Author:G. H. Hardy
Create image

“If a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity of age.”

IfsMenRealWould BeAgeScienceOrderOpportunityCan DoSacrificeEconomicTalentFieldsExerciseHundredMathematicsSillyDecentMathematicianJustifiedBeing Silly
Author:G. H. Hardy
Create image

“I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.”

WayMayWantedRememberSciencePassionFeltTermBoysCareersBeatsMathematicsNotionNobleMathematicianExaminationScholarship
Book:A Mathematician's Apology
Create image

“When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most austere and the most remote, and a mathematician should be of all men the one who can most easily take refuge where, as Bertrand Russell says, "one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world."”

MenWorldShouldMayArtScienceMathematicsMadImpulseRefugeMathematicianExileArt And ScienceDrearyIncomparable
Book:A Mathematician's Apology
Create image