Science

"Bolder than exploring the unknown may be doubting the known." Alexander von Humboldt

"While I was thinking of this problem in my student years, I came to know the strange result of Michelson’s experiment. Soon I came to the conclusion that our idea about the motion of the Earth with respect to the ether is incorrect, if we admit Michelson’s null result as a fact. This was the first path which led me to the special theory of relativity. Since then I have come to believe that the motion of the Earth cannot be detected by any optical experiment, though the Earth is revolving around the Sun." Albert Einstein

"I have known, too, for a long time, that we have no arguments for the Copernican system, but I shall never dare to be the first to attack it. Don’t msh into the wasp’s nest. You will but bring upon yourself the scorn of the thoughtless multitude. If once a famous astronomer arises against the present conception, I will communicate, too, my observations; but to come forth as the first against opinions which the world has become fond of – I don’t feel the courage" Alexander von Humboldt

"I have [...] the impression that most politicians are still not aware just how much they are controlled today by the financial markets, indeed that they are ruled by them." Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Hans Tietmeyer

"Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." Kenneth Ewart Boulding

"The search for a sea route to India must be organized in such a way that it does not at least prevent the discovery of America." Peter Strohschneider

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Albert Einstein

"We cannot even solve exactly for the motion of three bodies in Newton’s theory of gravity, and the difficulty increases with the number of bodies and the complexity of the theory. … We already know the laws that govern the behaviour of matter under all but the most extreme conditions. In particular, we know the basic laws that underlie all of chemistry and biology. Yet we have certainly not reduced these subjects to the status of solved problems…" Stephen W. Hawking

"Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth." Albert Einstein

"It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"The problem is not people being educated. The problem is that they are educated just enough to believe what they've been taught, but not educated enough to question what they've been taught." Unbekannter Autor

"It is my firm conviction that the last seventy years of the twentieth century will go down in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics." Carver Andress Mead

"It seems as though the natural sciences will never be able to lift the veil on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by faith in reason, the story ends like a bad dream: he has climbed the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak—and as he pulls himself over the final rocky ledge, he is greeted by a group of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." Harald Lesch

"Modern paleoanthropology is a field of research not without irony: it lacks the very objects of study. … It is as if one were trying to write the history of Central Europe on the basis of nothing more than half a Roman coin, the handkerchief of a maid from the Wilhelmine era, and parts of a microphone […] And so the question of humankind’s origins still remains one of the great, unresolved mysteries of the natural sciences." GEO-Magazin, Juni 2011