We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
Edgar MitchellRead
We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.
Interpretation
We must explore beyond Earth to understand the universe better.
In this quote, Edgar Mitchell emphasizes the importance of expanding our horizons through exploration, not just of our planet but of the vast universe beyond. It suggests that there is much to learn about the cosmos and encourages humanity to push the boundaries of our knowledge and understanding of what exists outside our immediate surroundings.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about space exploration initiatives.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
We need to make the world safe for creativity and intuition, for it's creativity and intuition that will make the world safe for us.
We're at a point in history were we have to become a part of the neighborhood of inhabited planets, like a neighborhood of a community, which we have not even acknowledged that that community exists up until this point.
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty.
My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.
I experienced an ecstasy of unity. I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it and experienced it sentiently. The restraints and boundaries of flesh and bone fell away.
String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.
... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation prevails: biologists have documented a veritable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurable evolution on timescales of years and decades.
The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.
The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.
Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are we disappointed in our expectation from the most certain and powerful of our remedies, by the negligence or obstinacy of our patients! What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more β we have increased their mortality.
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
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