alt Hacker NewsIf this was 1930, then this was spoken three years before Hilbert watched Nazis destroy his department at Göttingen. This reads differently viewed in that light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Göttingen#%22Gre...
And it's prophetic, when he speaks (in translation)
>"The achievements of industry, for example, would never have seen the light of day had the practical-minded existed alone and had not these advances been pursued by disinterested fools".
Because who was it Nazis purged from Hilbert's Göttingen? Szilárd; Einstein; Teller—the future of industry, born of abstract theories and of sciences pursued for their own sake.
During a dinner in 1934, Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education asked Hilbert, “How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?” Hilbert's sharp response was, “There is no mathematics in Göttingen any more.”