Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

I don't want to make a member of Congress do something that that member of Congress's constituents would not approve of, or would not agree to. So in that regard, I'm kind of the opposite of a lobbyist.

Too many people view on [space exploration] as a luxury rather than as a fundamental driver to stimulate interest in science to everyone in the educational pipeline. It's vital to our prosperity and security.

Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.

When you advance a frontier and you do tomorrow what's never been done today, you have to innovate to make that happen. You become an innovation culture. When I grew up, every time I turned around it was, "Oh, here's the longest bridge or the deepest tunnel or the fastest airplane." And I originally thought that was just kind of like a pissing contest with men with too much testosterone. And then I realized that to make the tallest building you have to innovate. To make the fastest train you have to design the train in a way that it's never been designed before.

One of the reasons we're here, that we exist at all, is that Earth, cosmically speaking, is in a relatively peaceful place: orbiting our Sun in a near perfect circle.

Nothing is a thing: it's nothing. So I can imagine a place where there's not even nothing.

Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.

The universe is almost 14 billion years old, and, wow! Life had no problem starting here on Earth! I think it would be inexcusably egocentric of us to suggest that we're alone in the universe.

Only when creative people take ownership of cosmic discovery will society accept science as the cultural activity that it is.

If our solar system is not unusual, then there are so many planets in the universe that, for example, they outnumber the sum of all sounds and words ever uttered by every human who has ever lived. To declare that Earth must be the only planet with life in the universe would be inexcusably bigheaded of us.

If there's some kind of rock star status, would I be irresponsible if I didn't somehow use it for a continued greater good? I'm always involved in some way with reaching the public.

No one is saying you're possessed by the devil anymore except the most ignorant of people in modern culture.

There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.

If Earth ever suffers a runaway greenhouse effect (like what has happened on Venus), then our atmosphere would trap excess amounts of solar energy, the air temperature would rise, and the oceans would swiftly evaporate into the atmosphere as they sustained a rolling boil. This would be bad.

I always wanted to be respected for my mind.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.

The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association. And that's not the way to have a conversation.

You get to say that the Earth is flat because we live in a country that guarantees your free speech. But it's not a country that guarantees that anything you say is correct.

If a scientist is not befuddled by what they're looking at, then they're not a research scientist.

Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I'm small but I'm also big. I'm big because I'm connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.

Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.

... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.

Since life on Earth is, so far, the only known example of life in the universe, our dilemma may simply be that we have no other examples to compare us with. If we did, then the life/non-life transition might look downright simple to us.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

I'm not hard to find. I'm all over the Internet.

Everyone has all different experiences in school. I just know that throughout my life, at no time did any teacher ever point to me and say, hey. He'll go far.

Asteroids have us in our sight. The dinosaurs didn't have a space program, so they're not here to talk about this problem. We are, and we have the power to do something about it. I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy, to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not, and end up going extinct.

When you visit countries that don't nurture these kinds of ambitions, you can feel th absence of hope...people are reduced to worrying only about that day's shelter or the next day's meal. It's a shame, even a tragedy, how many people do not get to think about the future. Technology coupled with wise leadership not only solves these problems but enables dreams of tomorow.

We are only intelligent by our own measures

Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes.... The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms.

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.

If you want to come behind the Bible and explain everything scientifically, then you're denying God's power over miracles.

It's odd that the word 'atheist' even exist. I don't play golf, is there a word for non-golf players ?

Apart from the obvious advantages of having ice to melt, filter, then drink, you can also break apart the water's hydrogen from its oxygen. Use the hydrogen and some of the oxygen as active ingredients in rocket fuel and keep the rest of the oxygen for breathing. And in your spare time between space missions, you can always go ice skating on the frozen lake created with the extracted water.

One should not be too distracted by definitions. Ideas transcend definitions.

We already know the limits of Einstein's theories. From the centers of black holes at the very beginning of the universe - we call these singularities - Einstein's equations fail. In fact, people have joked that's where God is dividing by zero.

On some issues, I'm a staunch Conservative — like curtailing greenhouse gas emissions so that we can Conserve the environment.

Space only becomes ordinary when the frontier is no longer being breached.

Extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility are two equal ways of not having to think at all. And I don't think I'm the first to say that.

If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.

A supernova is one of the most powerful explosions in the universe. It's so luminous, it can be seen across billions of light years. It releases as much energy in an instant as our sun will produce over its 10-billion-year lifetime.

The educated elite is not without their own actual snobbery. And I kind of an anti-elitist in that regard.

This past year, we received our second Emmy nomination for Outstanding Informational Series. While we'd all like to win, I can say with utmost sincerity that it mattered more to me that we got noticed than whether or not we win.

No one wants to die, and no one wants to die poor. These are the two fundamental truths that transcend culture, they transcend politics, they transcend economic cycles.

Photons are accurately and legitimately described as waves and particles at the same time. They are genuine wavicles.

Now imagine a world in which everyone, but especially people with power and influence, holds an expanded view of our place in the cosmos. With that perspective, our problems would shrink-or never arise at all-and we could celebrate our earthly differences while shunning the behavior of our predecessors who slaughtered each other because of them.

If Pizza sizes were given in area not diameter, you'd see instantly that a 7 inch is less than half the size of a 10 inch pie

Long ago Mars was an oasis of running water.Today the Martiansurfaceis a sterile,barren desert. Here on Earth, who knows what climactic knobs we unwittingly turn,which might one day render Earth as dry and lifeless as Mars. (From the cover of Old Poison by Joan Francis)