Next time you're stunned by a large moon on the horizon, bend over and view it between your legs. The effect goes away entirely.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests a different perspective on a common sight to show how perception can change experience.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote encourages us to approach the beauty of nature, particularly the sight of a large moon on the horizon, with a playful and unconventional attitude. By bending over to view the moon between our legs, we shift our perspective, which not only alters our visual experience but also serves as a metaphor for how our viewpoints can dramatically change our perceptions of reality and beauty.
In practice
During an astronomy workshop to lighten the mood.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.
Everywhere I look, I see something holy.
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.
The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter woods.
The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The birth and death of leaves is part of that greater cycle that moves among the stars.
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