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" I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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" The caricature of science is that we hold tight to the theories we have, and shun challenges to them. That's just not true. In fact, we hold our highest rewards for those scientists who can prove others wrong. And by the way, they are famous in their own lifetimes. We don't wait until they're dead. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God. I just don't - I don't have the energy for that, and so I... Agnostic separates me from the conduct of atheists whether or not there is strong overlap between the two categories, and at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" We didn't build the interstate system to connect New York to Los Angeles because the West Coast was a priority. No, we webbed the highways so people can go to multiple places and invent ways of doing things not thought of by the persons building the roads. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" In any city with lots of skyscrapers, lots of skyline, the moon seems bigger than it is. It's called the moon illusion. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" If you're a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you're not going to be a good scientist. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Space enthusiasts are the most susceptible demographic to delusion that I have ever seen. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I get enormous satisfaction from knowing I'm doing something for society. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Mars once was wet and fertile. It's now bone dry. Something bad happened on Mars. I want to know what happened on Mars so that we may prevent it from happening here on Earth. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not and end up going extinct. We'd be the laughingstock of the aliens of the cosmos if that were the case. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I said that if an alien came to visit, I'd be embarrassed to tell them that we fight wars to pull fossil fuels out of the ground to run our transportation. They'd be like, 'What?' "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" You will never find scientists leading armies into battle. You just won't. Especially not astrophysicists - we see the biggest picture there is. We understand how small we are in the cosmos. We understand how fragile and temporary our existence is here on Earth. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I claim that space is part of our culture. You've heard complaints that nobody knows the names of the astronauts, that nobody gets excited about launches, that nobody cares anymore except people in the industry. I don't believe that for a minute. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I've known from long ago that the universe was calling me. If you were one of those annoying adults that said, 'Oh, what are you gonna be when you grow up?' I would say, 'Astrophysicist.' And then they'd walk away real quickly. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" We live in the kind of society where, in almost all cases, hard work is rewarded. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I'm fascinated by the deaths of stars and the havoc they wreak on their environments. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I don't know anybody who said, 'I love that teacher, he or she gave a really good homework set,' or 'Boy, that was the best class I ever took because those exams were awesome.' That's not what people want to talk about. It's not what influences people in one profession or another. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" We explore our environment, more than we are compelled to utter poetry, when we're toddlers. We start doing that later. Before that happens, every child is a scientist. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" We have bred multiple generations of people who have not experienced knowing where you are the moment a news story broke, with that news story being great and grand and something that elevates society instead of diminishes it. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" In nature, when you conduct science, it is the natural world that is the ultimate decider in what is true and what is not. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" For most of human civilization, the pace of innovation has been so slow that a generation might pass before a discovery would influence your life, culture or the conduct of nations. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" The history of exploration across nations and across time is not one where nations said, 'Let's explore because it's fun.' It was, 'Let's explore so that we can claim lands for our country, so that we can open up new trade routes; let's explore so we can become more powerful.' "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!' "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" If you're going to lead a space frontier, it has to be government; it'll never be private enterprise. Because the space frontier is dangerous, and it's expensive, and it has unquantified risks. And under those conditions, you cannot establish a capital-market evaluation of that enterprise. You can't get investors. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" My parents didn't know much science; in fact, they didn't know science at all. But they could recognize a science book when they saw it, and they spent a lot of time at bookstores, combing the remainder tables for science books to buy for me. I had one of the biggest libraries of any kid in school, built on books that cost 50 cents or a dollar. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" When Kennedy said, 'Let's go to the moon,' we didn't yet have a vehicle that wouldn't kill you on launch. He said we'll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson