WhenIWasYourAge: We had to open all doors by ourselves. None of them knew we were coming.

Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without that knowledge, without that capacity to think, you can easily become a victim of people who seek to take advantage of you.

For decades, we've been trying to cook up the building blocks of life, in the lab, and recreate the origins of it all, but the parts didn't seem to fit together, until now.

In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed; no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh.

People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.

When we try to look farther into the universe we come to what appears to be the end of space but actually it's the beginning of time.

I don't want people to say, 'Something is true because Tyson says it is true.' That's not critical thinking.