Quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

“While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, its worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse. And in case youre one of those people who thinks that the edge may be a special place, we are not at the edge of anything either.”

“When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.”

“The most accessible field in science, from the point of view of language, is astrophysics. What do you call spots on the sun? Sunspots. Regions of space you fall into and you don’t come out of? Black holes. Big red stars? Red giants. So I take my fellow scientists to task. He’ll use his word, and if I understand it, I’ll say, “Oh, does that mean da-da-da-de-da?”

“There’s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.”

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. Youd be surprised how far that gets you.”

“Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. Thats why my public focus is primarily adults.”

“My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.”

“When asked about which scientist hed like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.”

“To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of shit.”

“People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.”

“People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noahs ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; its about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.”

“The good thing about science is that its true whether or not you believe in it.”

“The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth - the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars- the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy- guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up- many people feel small, cause their small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars.”

“I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybodys easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.”