You cannot have both. I mean a fish having a meeting one billion years ago under the water and saying: "We are fish, we have all this power, now it is time to conquer the land". But you cannot conquer the land while remaining fish. You can't go to the real world remaining mathematicians; that's absurd. Either you study real problems in the real world - it's a remarkable intellectual challenge, or you remain a mathematician.
(M. Gromov, Dead Sea discussions, in: GAFA 2000. Visions in Mathematics)

Tirado daqui. O autor é um matemático, o que torna a agressão políticamente correta. É um pouco como só negros têm direito a dizer nigger.