G. H. Hardy - Chess Quotes

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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.

G. H. Hardy

A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way 'trivial' mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful — 'important'.

G. H. Hardy

Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.

G. H. Hardy

I will say only that if a chess problem is, in the crude sense, 'useless', then that is equally true of most of the best mathematics; that very little of mathematics is useful practically, and that the little [that is] is comparatively dull.

G. H. Hardy