When Rush Limbaugh says I'm not a scientist, I'm charmed - I smirk.
Bill NyeRead
What makes the United States great, the reason people wanted to live in the United States, move here still, is because of our ability to innovate.
Interpretation
The United States is distinguished by its innovative spirit, attracting people worldwide.
In this quote, Bill Nye emphasizes that the greatness of the United States is rooted in its culture of innovation. He suggests that this ability to innovate is a key reason why many people aspire to live in the U.S., as it represents a land of opportunity where new ideas and advancements thrive.
In practice
In a graduation speech about future careers.
When Rush Limbaugh says I'm not a scientist, I'm charmed - I smirk.
Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10.
NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.
Television isn't inherently good or bad. You go to a bookstore, there are how many thousands of books, but how many of those do you want? Five? Television's the same way. If you're going to show people stuff, television is the way to go. Words and pictures show things.
If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it's game over. It's control-alt-delete for civilization.
Burning carbon-based substances like oil, gas, and especially coal, produces billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide each year. Methane gas from cows and pigs and other animals on our large farms ends up in the atmosphere as well, trapping more of the sun's energy as heat.
To be an inventor, you have to be willing to live with a sense of uncertainty, to work in this darkness and grope towards an answer, to put up with anxiety about whether there is an answer.
Innovation happens when people are given the freedom to ask questions and the resources and power to find the answers.
If the idea is really new and unique and big, other people will all think it is bad and is going to fail.
Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.
Companies over-emphasize idea generation and under-emphasize idea execution when it comes to innovation.
The innovative process is a fragile one, dependent on a complex, often messy interplay of imagination, competition, and exchange. Curbing new ideas hurts not only individual creators but the audience for which they create and the posterity that inherits their legacy.
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