Nothing wrong with expecting people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, until you realize that some people have no boots. - Neil deGrasse Tyson

No matter who you are, engaging in the quest to discover where and how things began tends to induce emotional fervor—as if knowing the beginning bestows upon you some form of fellowship with, or perhaps governance over, all that comes later. So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.

I don't want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don't understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don't understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.

Early Riser, might you be?
Want a spectacle for free?
Before sunrise you will see
Two bright stars — planets they be.

The brightest one is Venus.
Outshining Jupiter’s light.
Catch both before they’re consumed
By all of morning twilight.