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Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

Total quotes: 114
“Often Politicians tell us lies we want to hear rather than truths we need to know — leaving one to ask whether they should be followers of our desires or leaders of our needs.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, What we want to hear
Tagged: Politics, Being a leader
“There seems to be a mysterious force in the universe, one that overwhelms gravity on the grandest scale to push the cosmos apart….We call it ‘dark energy,’ but that name, like ‘dark matter,’ is merely a code word for our ignorance. It's okay not to know all the answers. It's better to admit our ignorance than to believe answers that might be wrong. Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what's really there.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Unafraid of the Dark
Tagged: Universe, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, gravity, Cosmos
“By burning coal, oil and gas, our civilization is exhaling carbon dioxide much faster than Earth can absorb it. So, CO2 is building up in the atmosphere. The planet is heating up.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: The World Set Free
Tagged: oil, coal, Gas, carbon dioxide, CO2, Global Warming
“Why is Venus scorching hot? It's because…the flow of energy is blocked by a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide….Venus is in the grip of a runaway greenhouse effect.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: The World Set Free
Tagged: Venus, carbon dioxide, Greenhouse Effect
“I could be thousands of miles away, and yet, when you turn on whatever device is bringing my image and voice to you, I'm there. Instantaneously. How is that possible?....It all began in the mind of one person….This is the story of how we learned to make electrons do our bidding.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: The Electric Boy
Tagged: Electrons, Digital Communication, Michael Faraday
“Congratulations. You're alive. There's an unbroken thread that stretches across more than three billion years that connects us to the first life that ever touched this world. Think of how tough, resourceful and lucky all of our countless ancestors must have been to survive long enough to pass on the message of life to the next and the next and the next generation, hundreds of millions of times before it came to us….Each of us is a runner in the longest and most dangerous relay race there ever was, and at this moment, we hold the baton in our hands.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
Tagged: Congratulations, Resourceful, Survival, Ancestors
“Few animals larger than a hundred pounds survived the catastrophes of the late Cretaceous. The dust cloud brought night and cold to the surface for months. The dinosaurs froze and starved to death. But there were small creatures who took shelter in the Earth. And when they emerged they found that the monsters who had hunted and terrorized them were gone. The Earth was becoming the Planet of the Mammals. And the Earth continued its ceaseless changing.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
Tagged: Cretaceous, Mammals, Earth
“Two-thirds of the Earth lies beneath more than 1,000 feet of water. It's a vast and largely unexplored frontier....This is the longest submarine mountain range in the world, the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge. It wraps around our globe like the seam on a baseball. The past is another planet, but most of us don't really know this one.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
Tagged: Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge, Frontier, Earth, Ocean
“Nothing lasts forever; even the stars die.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Sisters of the Sun
Tagged: Death, Eternity, ephemeral, Stars
“There are many kinds of stars. Some are bright like the Sun. Some are dim. The greatest stars are ten million times larger than the smallest ones. Some stars are old beyond imagining, more than ten billion years of age. Others are being born right now. When atoms fuse in the hearts of stars, they make starlight. Stars are born in litters, formed from the gas and dust of interstellar clouds.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Sisters of the Sun
Tagged: Stars, Sun, Atoms, Clouds
“For thousands of generations we watched the stars as if our lives depended on it, because they did….[O]ur ancestors noticed that the motions of the stars across the nights of the year foretold changes on Earth that threatened or enhanced our chances for survival.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Sisters of the Sun
Tagged: Generations, Ancestors, Earth
“There are more atoms in your eye than there are stars in all the galaxies in the known universe.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still
Tagged: Atoms, Eye, Stars, galaxies, Universe
“The age and size of the cosmos are written in light. The nature of beauty and the substance of the stars, the laws of space and time they were there all along, but we never saw them until we devised a more powerful way of seeing.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Hiding in the Light
Tagged: Cosmos, Nature, beauty, space and time
“Using nothing more than Newton's laws of gravitation, we astronomers can confidently predict that several billion years from now our home galaxy—the Milky Way—will merge with our neighboring galaxy—Andromeda…Any life on the worlds of that far off future…would be treated to an amazing billion-year-long light show; a dance of a half a trillion stars, to music first heard on one little world, by a man who had but one true friend.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: When Knowledge Conquered Fear
Tagged: Sir Isaac Newton, Astronomers, Milky Way, Andromeda
“Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. We're not afraid to admit what we don't know. There's no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all the answers.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Some of the Things That Molecules Do
Tagged: Science, Frontier, Knowledge, Ignorance, Shame
“The Theory of Evolution, like the Theory of Gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on Earth is not only solid science, in my view, it's also a soaring spiritual experience.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Some of the Things That Molecules Do
Tagged: Evolution, gravity, Kinship, Spiritual
“If life has a sanctuary, it's here in the nucleus, which contains our DNA—the ancient scripture of our genetic code. And it's written in a language that all life can read.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Some of the Things That Molecules Do
Tagged: Nucleus, DNA, Life
“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.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way
Tagged: Science, Passing the Torch, Antiquity, Community of Minds, Generations
“Many of us suspect that all of this—all the worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters in our observable universe—is but one tiny bubble in an infinite ocean of other universes; a multiverse. Universe upon universe; worlds without end.”
— Himself - Host, Cosmos, Season 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way
Tagged: Astronomy, galaxies, Stars, Universe
“Whenever an Artist dies, the world loses a bit of what makes us uniquely human.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Artists, Death, death of artists, people in the arts
“I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people's politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Politics, Truth, politics and truth
“A great challenge of life:

Knowing enough to think you are right, but not knowing enough to know you are wrong.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Right And Wrong, knowing what's right and wrong, Morality
“Odd that our measures of animal intelligence are often tests for what we do best, rather than tests for what they do best.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: animal intelligence, Intelligence, Intellect
“If you think you look old in a Photo you just took, consider instead that you will never again be that young.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Age, Getting Older, Growing Old
“In school, students cheat because the system values high grades more than students value learning.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: School, Education, education system, Learning
“In school, curiosity is hardly ever taught or nurtured, breeding legions of students who’ve lost all love of learning.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: School, Education, education system, Learning, Curiosity
“Bears repeating: Creativity that satisfies & affirms your world view is Entertainment. Creativity that challenges & disrupts your world view is Art.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Creativity, Entertainment, Art, creative mind
“Science Literacy is not only about what you know, it's about your depth of curiosity, and your capacity to evaluate evidence.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Science, science literacy, Curiosity
“Scientists are simply adults who retained and nurtured their native curiosity from childhood.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Scientists, Curiosity
“The perennial cry to 'Save Earth' is odd. Planet Earth survives massive asteroid strikes -- it'll survive anything we throw at it. But Life on Earth will not.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Earth, Climate Change, Global Warming, Life, Life On Earth, future of the earth, future of the people
“Writing in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and God's handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout.

But a careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Perimeter of Ignorance
Tagged: God, Spirituality, How To Think, Psychology
“Claiming there is no other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming there are no whales in the ocean.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, A Quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Belief, Ideology, Theories
“Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's one-man mission
Tagged: surprise, Amazement, Reality, Facts
“The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ask Me Anything...
Tagged: Successful People, creating, meaning in life, Dreams, motivated, self awareness, Self Acceptance, self motivated, Inspirational
“It is the destiny of stars to collapse.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
Tagged: Destiny, Star, Collapse, Fate
“We are, each of us, a little universe.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos
Tagged: Universe, Personalities, Uniqueness, difference, Own World
“Just an FYI: Energy consumed by the United States in one year equals the energy made by the Sun in one millionth of a second.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: energy consumption, energy usage, consumption
“Show me a Nation with a science-hostile government, and I'll show you a society with failing health, wealth, & security.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Truth And Science, humanity
“There’s just no way around this one: YOU MATTER, unless you multiply yourself by the speed of light squared, then YOU ENERGY.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Matter, Energy, Science Jokes
“Would be cool if we discovered intelligent life on a planet orbiting the bright star Vega and learned that they're all Vegans”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tagged: Vegan Jokes, Vegan, Vega, Planet Jokes
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