Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
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People who are scientists today are scientists in spite of the system, typically, not because of it.
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Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults.
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I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.
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Space in general gave us GPS - that's not specifically NASA, but it's investments in space.
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Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.
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The Pacific is the best toilet for satellites.
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All Plutophiles are based in America. If you go to other countries, they have much less of an attachment to either the existence or preservation of Pluto as a planet. Once you investigate that, you find out that Disney's dog Pluto was sketched the same year the cosmic object was discovered. And Pluto was discovered by an American.
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No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.
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I was an aspiring astrophysicist, and that's how I defined myself, not by my skin color. People didn't treat me as someone with science ambitions. They treated me as someone they thought was going to mug them, or who was a shoplifter.
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When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there's nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.
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The problem is not scientifically illiterate kids; it is scientifically illiterate adults. Kids are born curious about the natural world. They are always turning over rocks, jumping with two feet into mud puddles and playing with the tablecloth and fine china.
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I don't want people to say, 'Something is true because Tyson says it is true.' That's not critical thinking.
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The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It's a slightly bigger moon; I ain't using the adjective 'supermoon.'
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Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.'
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Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.
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I'm not as famous as Stephen Hawking, but certainly in the U.S., I have a very high profile for a scientist. It is an awesome responsibility, one that I don't shoulder lightly.
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If you're a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you're not going to be a good scientist.
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Darwin's theory of evolution is a framework by which we understand the diversity of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' that you apply and say, 'What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years?' Biology isn't there yet with that kind of predictive precision.
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Perhaps we've never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there's no sign of intelligent life.
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Most gravity has no known origin. Is it some exotic particle? Nobody knows. Is dark energy responsible for expansion of the universe? Nobody knows.
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Private enterprise can never lead a space frontier. It's not possible because a space frontier is expensive, it has unknown risks and it has unquantified risks.
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I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God. I just don't - I don't have the energy for that, and so I... Agnostic separates me from the conduct of atheists whether or not there is strong overlap between the two categories, and at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all.
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All of the full moons for the entire year are special in that they have particular names.
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The universe is hilarious! Like, Venus is 900 degrees. I could tell you it melts lead. But that's not as fun as saying, 'You can cook a pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds.' And next time my fans eat pizza, they're thinking of Venus!