[T]aking the idea that General Relativity is an effective theory seriously involves rethinking physics without spacetime.

… the study of the inner working of nature passed from the engineer scientist to the mathematician

[W]e are still, in Newton’s words, like children playing with pebbles on the sea-shore, while the great ocean of truth rolls, unexplored, beyond our reach.

We see that we can never understand the true nature of reality.

(A) man never chooses for himself; his past always chooses for him.

Our minds can never step out of their prison-houses to investigate the real nature of the things….which inhabit that mysterious world out beyond our sense-organs.

Our studies can never put us into contact with reality, and its true meaning and nature must be for ever hidden from us.

This gives an answer about 120 orders of magnitude higher than the upper limits on [the vacuum energy] set by cosmological observations. This is probably the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics! Nobody knows how to make sense out of this result.

Imagine that I give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing, and that the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon; whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair?