Quotes by 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.

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, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.

The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

When you organize extraordinary missions, you attract people of extraordinary talent who might not have been inspired by or attracted to the goal of saving the world from cancer or hunger or pestilence.

Doing what has never been done before is intellectually seductive, whether or not we deem it practical.

We conquer the Independence Day aliens by having a Macintosh laptop computer upload a software virus to the mothership (which happens to be one-fifth the mass of the Moon), thus disarming its protective force field. I don’t know about you, but back in 1996 I had trouble just uploading files to other computers within my own department, especially when the operating systems were different. There is only one solution: the entire defense system for the alien mothership must have been powered by the same release of Apple Computer’s system software as the laptop computer that delivered the virus.

The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who dont agree.

Lets grant that the stars are scattered through space, hither and yon. But how hither, and how yon? To the unaided eye the brightest stars are more than a hundred times brighter than the dimmest. So the dim ones are obviously a hundred times farther away from Earth, arent they?Nope.That simple argument boldly assumes that all stars are intrinsically equally luminous, automatically making the near ones brighter than the far ones. Stars, however, come in a staggering range of luminosities, spanning ten orders of magnitude ten powers of ten. So the brightest stars are not necessarily the ones closest to Earth. In fact, most of the stars you see in the night sky are of the highly luminous variety, and they lie extraordinarily far away.If most of the stars we see are highly luminous, then surely those stars are common throughout the galaxy.Nope again.High-luminosity stars are the rarest. In any given volume of space, theyre outnumbered by the low-luminosity stars a thousand to one. Its the prodigious energy output of high-luminosity stars that enables you to see them across such large volumes of space.

A bullet fired level from a gun will hit ground at same time as a bullet dropped from the same height. Do the Physics.

In the beginning, there was physics. Physics describes how matter, energy, space, and time behave and interact with one another. The interplay of these characters in our cosmic drama underlies all biological and chemical phenomena. Hence everything fundamental and familiar to us earthlings begins with, and rests upon, the laws of physics. When we apply these laws to astronomical settings, we deal with physics writ large, which we call astrophysics.

Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; Ill stay down here and get the data. But nobodys ever given a parade for a robot. Nobodys ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. Its not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; its the vicarious participation in discovery itself.

In some ways, we are traveling in time now. We just happened to be prisoners of the present in the eternal transition from the past to the future.

If your ego starts out, I am important, I am big, I am special, youre in for some disappointments when you look around at what weve discovered about the universe. No, youre not big. No, youre not. Youre small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body thats limited on Earth.

Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If theres someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.

Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.

If you get asteroids about a kilometer in size, those are large enough and carry enough energy into our system to disrupt transportation, communication, the food chains, and that can be a really bad day on Earth.

Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?

Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.

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

If youre going to lead a space frontier, it has to be government; itll never be private enterprise. Because the space frontier is dangerous, and its expensive, and it has unquantified risks. And under those conditions, you cannot establish a capital-market evaluation of that enterprise. You cant get investors.