Hermann Hankel Quote

Mathematics, considered as a science, owes its origin to the idealistic needs of the Greek philosophers, and not as fable has it, to the practical demands of Egyptian economics.... Adam was no zoologist when he gave names to the beasts of the field, nor were the Egyptian surveyors mathematicians.

Die Entwickelung der Mathematik in den letzten Jahrhunderten (p. 7), Akademische Antrittsrede. Tübingen, Germany. 1884