Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
Sylvia EarleRead
Scientists never stop asking. They're little kids who never grew up.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the relentless curiosity and wonder of scientists, likening them to children who are always eager to learn and explore.
Sylvia Earle's quote highlights the innate curiosity that fuels scientific inquiry, suggesting that scientists possess a childlike wonder that drives them to ask questions and seek knowledge. It implies that this perpetual curiosity is essential to the scientific process, as it leads to discoveries and innovation, much like how a child explores the world around them with fascination and enthusiasm.
In practice
In a speech about scientific innovation, one could use this quote to inspire young scientists.
Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.
Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet-as if the ocean somehow doesn't matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean...We are learning otherwise.
No water, no life. No blue, no green.
I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, extraterrestrial intelligence could often be millions or billions of years in advance of us. We're the galaxy's noodling newbies.
If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.
We didn't build the interstate system to connect New York to Los Angeles because the West Coast was a priority. No, we webbed the highways so people can go to multiple places and invent ways of doing things not thought of by the persons building the roads.
The world today is made, it is powered by science; and for any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes towards slavery.
The fact that mathematics does such a good job of describing the Universe is a mystery that we don't understand. And a debt that we will probably never be able to repay.
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