“Good wrong ideas are extremely scarce… and good wrong ideas that even remotely rival the majesty of string theory have never been seen.”

as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (1996)

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Edward Witten 20
American theoretical physicist 1951

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“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong.”

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Context: We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us... We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

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