Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
-
If you slid Pluto to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate that ice, and it would grow a tail. Now that's no kind of behavior for a planet.
-
We account for one-sixth of the forces of gravity we see in the universe. There is no known objects accounting for most of the effective gravity in the universe. Something is making stuff move that is not anything we have ever touched.
-
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.
-
Some asteroids have us in their sights. Be nice to sort of go near them and find out what they're made of, possibly tag their ears so they're always broadcasting to us their location. In case one of their trajectories head straight for us, we'll know well in advance to do something about it.
-
You have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have scientific literacy in topics that matter for future political issues.
-
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.
-
No astrophysicist would deny the possibility of life. I think we're not creative enough to imagine what life would be like on another planet. Show me a dead alien. Better yet, show me a live one!
-
Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.
-
Within one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) than all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world.
-
I want people to see that the cosmic perspective is simultaneously honest about the universe we live in and uplifting, when we realize how far we have come and how wonderful is this world of ours.
-
I claim that space is part of our culture. You've heard complaints that nobody knows the names of the astronauts, that nobody gets excited about launches, that nobody cares anymore except people in the industry. I don't believe that for a minute.
-
Most gravity has no known origin. Is it some exotic particle? Nobody knows. Is dark energy responsible for expansion of the universe? Nobody knows.
-
All of the full moons for the entire year are special in that they have particular names.
-
There is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying, 'I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet, because this gave me insight. Let's go test that prediction,' and have the prediction be correct.
-
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.
-
Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. I kind of want to know what happened there because we're twirling knobs here on Earth without knowing the consequences of it. Mars once had running water. It's bone dry today. Something bad happened there as well.
-
It has been said that every great emerging scientific truth goes to three phases: First people say: 'It can't be true'. Second they say: 'It conflicts with the bible.' Third they say: 'It's true all along.'
-
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.
-
While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me.
-
I was transformed by picking up a pair of binoculars and looking up, and that's hard to do for a city kid because when you look up you just see buildings - and really, your first thought is to look in people's windows. So to look out of the space - out of living space - and look up to the sky, binoculars go far, literally and figuratively.
-
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.
-
You have people who believe they are scientifically literate but, in fact, are not. And I don't mind if you're not scientifically literate, but just admit that to yourself, so that you'll know, and perhaps you can take a first step to try to eradicate that.
-
There's a lot to do in space. I want to learn more about the greenhouse effect on Venus, about whether there was life on Mars, about the environment in which Earth and the Sun is immersed, the behavior of the Sun.
-
The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.