“It’s hard to appreciate the Earth when you’re down right upon it because it’s so huge. It gives you in an instant, just at a position 240,000 miles away from it, (an idea of) how insignificant we are, how fragile we are, and how fortunate we are to have a body that will allow us to enjoy the sky and the trees and the water ... It’s something that many people take for granted when they’re born and they grow up within the environment. But they don’t realize what they have. And I didn’t till I left it.”
—Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 and 13.

“...From up there, it looks finite and it looks fragile and it really looks like just a tiny little place on which we live in a vast expanse of space.”
—Winston Scott, two-time shuttle astronaut

“I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.”
—Wally Schirra, who flew around Earth on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions in the 1960s.

Article on MSNBC

EXCERPTS from Clinton’s speech at TED:

We live in a world that is inter-dependent but insufficient.

• It is profoundly unequal.
• It is unstable because of the threats of war, disease, etc.
• It is unsustainable because of climate change, resource depletion and species destruction.

I hope for integrated communities:

• Broadly shared opportunities
• Shared sense of responsibility
• A sense of belonging

The central psychological plague of this century is that people think they have more differences than in common.

We have to build systems.  In the absence of systems that function, we would not be able to achieve anything.  Think about it.  However many obstacles you have faced, at critical junctures, you always knew there was a predictable connection between the effort you exerted and the result you achieved.  In a world with no systems, in chaos, everything becomes a struggle and this predictability is not there.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks at the TED conference. This is a humorous and provocative talk.  Check it out: Link to Site

Every eduation system has the same hierarchy.  Everywhere, no matter where you go, at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts.  And within the arts, art and music are normally given the higher status than drama and dance.  No one teaches dance every day to children the way we teach mathematics…  [The way we teach suggests we think] our bodies are only a form of transport for our heads.

All public education systems around the world came into being to meet the needs of industrialization.  So you are steered benignly away as a child from subjects on the grounds you would never get a job doing that…  Now profoundly mistaken…  Many brilliant, creative people think they are not, because the thing they were good at wasn’t valued or was stigmatized.  We can’t go on that way.

Viktor Frankl is a renowned psychologist and survivor of Nazi concentration camps.  His book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”, sold two million copies.  In it, he expounded “Logotherapy”.

Logotherapy in a Nutshell (Quotes)
Striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man, not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives (Freudian theory).  That is why man is even ready to suffer on the condition that his suffering has a meaning.

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.  These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.

What man needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.  Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.  Everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

In the same way fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes.  Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue from the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

Humor is another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves…  Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

The true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world of experience rather than within man's own psyche as though it were a closed system. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct... Taking the responsibility to fulfill the tasks which life constantly sets for each individual.