We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
Edgar MitchellRead
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.
Interpretation
Creativity and intuition are essential for ensuring a safe and prosperous world.
This quote underscores the importance of fostering creativity and intuition in our society. Edgar Mitchell emphasizes that these qualities not only contribute to individual and collective progress but are also foundational in creating a secure and harmonious environment where human potential can thrive.
In practice
In a speech to inspire young innovators, highlighting the importance of creativity.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
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.
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.
You need courage to be creative. You need the courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone, if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity.
Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.
We are all creative, but by the time we are three of four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.
It seems to me that's the only way you can have a truly creative aggregate of people is if they're all contributing in different ways.
It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and takes unexpected turns. So it's that feeling of holding on, rather than pushing it, that is the most exciting thing. It's that need to occasionally bounce off the walls, letting anything happen for any reason, and having nothing to guide you that is the joy.
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