Richard Feynman:
> Atypically, among all the other laws of physics, gravitation has > relatively few practical applications — I mean the new knowledge of > the law; it has a lot of practical applications: it keeps people in > their seats, and so on. But the new knowledge of the law has few > practical applications relatively speaking, compared to the other > laws. … The only applications I could think of were, first, in some > geophysical prospecting; in predicting the tides; nowadays, more > modernly, in working out the motions of the satellites and planet > probes and so on that we send up; and also, modernly, to calculate the > predictions of the planets's position[s], which have great utility for > astrologers to publish their predictions and horoscopes in the > magazines. That's the strange world we live in: that all the advances > in understanding are used only to continue the nonsense which has > existed for two thousand years.
— "The Character of Physical Law, Part 1." Lecture at Cornell University, 1964. Online at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/richard-feynman-the-character-of-physical-law/ (accessed 20111203), time: 36:59–38:11.