I was transformed by picking up a pair of binoculars and looking up, and that's hard to do for a city kid because when you look up you just see buildings - and really, your first thought is to look in people's windows. So to look out of the space - out of living space - and look up to the sky, binoculars go far, literally and figuratively.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of perspective and exploration beyond one's immediate environment.
Neil Degrasse Tyson highlights that growing up in a city can limit one's view to mundane structures, leading to a lack of curiosity about the world beyond. By using binoculars to look up to the sky, he underscores the transformative power of expanding one's perspective, encouraging individuals to seek out broader horizons both literally and metaphorically.
In practice
During a speech on urban youth development, someone could quote this to inspire a new outlook.
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.
Since I have spread my wings to purpose high,_x000D_ The more beneath my feet the clouds I see,_x000D_ The more I give the winds my pinions free,_x000D_ Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.
Role models can inspire. Campaigns can motivate. But if we want all girls everywhere to rise up, then we must find them, befriend them and support them.
I'd like to try to inspire the youth, that's obviously where our future is and the kids are the ones you can mould and you can give them ideas and opportunities and I'd like to try to inspire all the young kids because I had a dream when I was young, that was to play for Australia.
If this world is going to be reached, I am convinced that it must be done by men and women of average talent.
I dreamed of being an NHLer the first day I played. Sometimes the other kids would say there are not many black players in the N.H.L. So I really followed as many black players as I could.
Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.
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