Spreuken over Wetenschap

will be criticized as a diversion of good science by politics.

Existence is the only reality for the self. As water cannot be separated from wetness, so you, the self, cannot be separated from existence. Existence is an integral aspect of your essence.

Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, "Disobedience was man's Original Virtue."

With the arrival of Venus Express, ESA is the only space agency to have science operations under way around four planets: Venus, the moon, Mars and Saturn. We are really proud to deliver such a capability to the international science community.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.