Lazare Carnot (1753 - 1823)

... the sciences are like a beautiful river, of which the course is easy to follow, when it has acquired a certain regularity; but if one wants to go back to the source, one will find it nowhere, because it is everywhere; it is spread so much [as to be] aver all the surface of the earth; it is the same if one wants to go back to the origin of the sciences, one will find only obscurity, vague ideas, vicious circles; and one loses oneself in the primitive ideas.

Essai sur les machines en général (1783)

Another quotation by one of today's mathematicians

JOC/EFR May 2017	School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland