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The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrenching of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
I see all this talk about jobs going overseas as a symptom of the absence of innovation. And the absence of innovation is a symptom of there being no major national priority to advance a frontier.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
Where there's water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it's bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
In any city with lots of skyscrapers, lots of skyline, the moon seems bigger than it is. It's called the moon illusion.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
'Cosmos' wouldn't deserve its place in primetime evening network television were it not a landscape on which compelling stories were told. People, when they watch TV in the evening, want to see stories, and science simply tells the best stories.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
It's always interesting just to see how the human mind is relating to the natural universe, and what we try to make of it just so we can believe we understand what's going on.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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.'
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
There is always a place I can take someone's curiosity and land where they end up enlightened when we're done. That's my challenge as an educator. No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
I've been a minimalist my whole life, even if you wouldn't know it from my office.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
If we find life out there, and it's not us, we will deem it not intelligent. But what may be equally as likely is that we find life that's vastly more intelligent than we are. If that's the case, we are putty in their hands.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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All of the full moons for the entire year are special in that they have particular names.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
I'm often asked by parents what advice can I give them to help get kids interested in science? And I have only one bit of advice. Get out of their way. Kids are born curious. Period.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
I'm constantly claimed by atheists. I find this intriguing. In fact, on my Wiki page - I didn't create the Wiki page, others did, and I'm flattered that people cared enough about my life to assemble it - and it said, 'Neil deGrasse is an atheist.'
Neil deGrasse Tyson