QED

Perhaps another thing to say about mathematics in this respect is that it’s a bit like discovering oil. [...] mathematics has one great advantage over oil, in that no one has yet—and physicists will show you they never will—found a way that you can keep on using the same oil forever. However, mathematics is never lost, it is always used. And it will always be used, the same mathematics; once it’s discovered and understood, it will be used forever. It’s a tremendous resource in that respect, and it’s not one that we should neglect to develop.

Andrew Wiles, in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 44, No. 5 (mei 1997), p. 588