G. H. Hardy Quotes

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

A mind that is very selective to forms... is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit their possible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.

One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies.

A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories.

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.

Just because I try to read a lot of stuff doesn't mean I can fully conceptualize all of these intense, big, abstract ideas.

A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and non-interfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal.

I wasn't really that interested in objects. I was interested in ideas.

Ideas are information taking shape.

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

The abstract kills, the concrete saves.

Magnitudes are algebraically represented by letter, men by men of letters, and so on.

To the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone gave reason.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.

The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.

We know next to nothing with any certainty about Pythagoras, except that he was not really called Pythagoras. The name by which he is known to us was probably a nickname bestowed by his followers. According to one source, it meant ‘He who spoke truth like an oracle’. Rather than entrust his mathematical and philosophical ideas to paper, Pythagoras is said to have expounded them before large crowds. The world’s most famous mathematician was also its first rhetorician.

Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas.

Metaphysics is a cobweb that the mind weaves around things.

Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations among objects; they are indifferent to the replacement of objects by others as long the relations don't change. Matter is not important, only form interests them.

To make use of your mind to think conceptually is to leave substance and attach yourself to form

Directing doesn't appeal to me. I'm much more in the world of ideas.