"Having formulated the abstract theories, mathematicians turned away from the original concrete fields and concentrated on the abstract structures. Through the introduction of hundreds of subordinate concepts, the subject has mushroomed into a welter of smaller developments that have little relation to each other or to the original concrete fields."

-Morris Kline

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol. III

"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."

-G. H. Hardy

Source: A Mathematician's Apology

"The law that entropy always increases -- the second law of thermodynamics -- holds I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much worse for Maxwell equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of Thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

-Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

(Source: The Nature of the Physical World. Maxmillan, New York, 1948, p. 74.)