Courant On Math

‘we must not accept the old blasphemous nonsense
that the ultimate justification of mathematical science
is the “glory of the human mind”.
abstraction and generalization are not mor vital
for mathematics than individuality of phenomena
and, before all, not more than inductive intiution.
only the interplay of these forces and their synthesis
can keep mathematics alive and preseve its dying
out into a dead skeleton.’

quoted in g.fischer, lineare algebra, 1st page