Scientia potentia est A Sponti (Außerparlamentarische Opposition) version of the slogan is "Wissen ist Macht, nichts wissen, macht auch nichts", a pun about the previous motto along the line "Knowledge is power, but being ignorant doesn't bother anyway". Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit belong to those Spontis that nevertheless held powerful positions, in Fischer's case with no more formal education than a taxi driver's licence. The German Bundeswehr Bataillon Elektronische Kampfführung 932, an electronic warfare unit based in Frankenberg (Eder), still uses the Latin version "Scientia potentia est" as its motto. Though its meaning varies from author to author, the phrase often implies
Latin word order be used as an auxiliary verb (e.g. "interfectus est" "he was killed"), as a copula (e.g. "dives erat" "he was rich") or as an existential verb, specifying the existence of something. As an existential verb, "est" (or its past tense "erat") often goes at the beginning of the sentence: Of these two orders, the first (with the locative phrase between the verb and the noun) is by far the most common. The second example above is unusual in that it does not present new information but merely reminds the reader of what has already been said ("There was a valley,