As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
So the history of discovery, particularly cosmic discovery, but discovery in general, scientific discovery, is one where at any given moment, there’s a frontier. And there tends to be an urge for people, especially religious people, to assert that across that boundary, into the unknown, lies the handiwork of God. This shows up a lot. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
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. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
I get enormous satisfaction from knowing I’m doing something for society. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
Every day, I wake up and I say, ‘Why… how… did I end up with 1.7 million Twitter followers?’ It’s freaky to me, every day, but that tells me that there’s an appetite out there that had previously been underserved. There’s an inner geek in us all, an inner bit of curiosity that people are discovering, and they like it. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
The Venus transit is not a spectacle the way a total solar eclipse is a spectacle. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they’ve beaten our top human chess champions. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
The urge to miniaturize electronics did not exist before the space program. I mean our grandparents had radios that was furniture in the living room. Nobody at the time was saying, ‘Gee, I want to carry that in my pocket.’ Which is a non-thought. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
Scientists in different disciplines don’t speak the same language. They publish in different journals. It’s like the United Nations: You come together, but no one speaks the same language, so you need some translators. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
Innovations in science and technology are the engines of the 21st-century economy; if you care about the wealth and health of your nation tomorrow, then you’d better rethink how you allocate taxes to fund science. The federal budget needs to recognize this. Neil deGrasse Tyson Read Quote
