Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

That's the good thing about science: it's true whether or not you believe in it. That's why it works.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Eventually, the Sun will swell to occupy the entire sky as its expansion subsumes the orbit of earth. Earth's surface temperature will rise until it matches the 3,000-degree rarified outer layers of the expanded Sun.... But not to worry. We will surely go extinct for some other reason long before this scenario unfolds.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
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.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
If you start wielding a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. And maybe they're not. Maybe it's more subtle than that. And so your toolkit has to be able to morph into what is necessary for what it is that you confront at that moment.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out — and we have only just begun.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ibn al-Haytham was the first person ever to set down the rules of science. -S01E05

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I'm optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren't still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you're in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
That makes me want to grab people on the street and say, "have you heard this?"

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Knowing how things work is important, but I think that's an incomplete view of what science literacy is or, at least, should be. Science literacy is an outlook. It's more of a lens through which you observe what goes on around you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher, to student, to teacher. A community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore—in part because it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their "low contracted prejudices." And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment—until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
We should not measure our space-faring era by where footprints have been laid.... We should measure our era by how many people take no notice at all. A legacy rises to become culture only when its elements are so common that they no longer attract comment.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
The only people who still call hurricanes "acts of God" are the people who write insurance forms.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astronomers do not commonly use Venereal, in favor of the less contagious-sounding Venutian. Blame the medical community, who snatched the word long before astronomers had any good use for it. I suppose you can't blame the doctors. Venus is the goddess of beauty and love, so she ought to be the goddess of its medical consequences.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I'm a fan of the planets in any combination. When I was born, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Sun, and the Moon were all in the sky.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Emotional truths woven by lawyers in the court of law are apparently more important than the truths of actual events. I have grown to fear for those whose innocence became trapped within the legal system.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance... Something fundamamental is going on in people's minds when they confront things they don't understnd.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
After 50 years of television, there's no other conclusion the aliens could draw, but that most humans are neurotic, death-hungry, dysfunctional idiots.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
While much good science has come from the Hubble telescope (including the most reliable measure to date for the expansion rate of the universe), you would never know from media accounts that the foundation of our cosmic knowledge continues to flow primarily from the analysis of spectra and not from looking at pretty pictures.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
A well-constructed theory must explain some of what is not understood, predict previously unknown phenomena, and, to be successful, have its predictions consistently confirmed. Furthermore, skeptics should not hesitate to question every possible assumption, no matter how basic.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
But to carve the Grand Canyon, Earth required millions of years. To excavate Meteor Crater, the universe, using a sixty-thousand-ton asteroid traveling upward of twenty miles per second, required a fraction of a second. No offense to Grand Canyon lovers, but for my money, Meteor Crater is the most amazing natural landmark in the world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religions document.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Trillions of years into the future, when all stars are gone...all parts of the cosmos will cool to the same temperature as the ever-cooling background. At that time, space travel will no longer provide refuge because even Hell will have frozen over. We may then declare that the universe has died-not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I see the universe not as a collection of objects, theories and phenomena, but as a vast stage of actors driven by intricate twists of story line and plot.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
I am proud to be part of a species where a subset of its members willingly put their lives at risk to push the boundaries of our existence.

Neil deGrasse Tyson