G. H. Hardy Quotes

Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.

… Philosophy proper is a subject, on the one hand so hopelessly obscure, on the other so astonishingly elementary, that there knowledge hardly counts.

Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven of the other side and ten of your own.

Most people can do nothing at all well

No one should ever be bored. … One can be horrified, or disgusted, but one can’t be bored.

Good work is not done by ‘humble’ men

It is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life.

It is rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility.

Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets

The mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. … [Whereas] the physicist’s reality, whatever it may be, has few or none of the attributes which common sense ascribes instinctively to reality. A chair may be a collection of whirling electrons.

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.

For any serious purpose, intelligence is a very minor gift.