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" If you slid Pluto to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate that ice, and it would grow a tail. Now that's no kind of behavior for a planet. "

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" 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

Culture

Influence

Innovation

" Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt. "

" It's the great tragedy - people employed in ways that don't fully tap everything they do best in life. "

" Pluto's orbit is so elongated that it crosses the orbit of another planet. Now that's... you've got no business doing that if you want to call yourself a planet. Come on, now! There's something especially transgressive about that. "

" Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening. "

" 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. "

" Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature. "

" There are thousands of asteroids whose orbit in the Solar System crosses that of Earth. And we have a little acronym for them - NEOs: near Earth objects. And our biggest goal is to try to catalogue them, so we know in advance if one is going to put us at risk. "

" You have people who believe they are scientifically literate but, in fact, are not. And I don't mind if you're not scientifically literate, but just admit that to yourself, so that you'll know, and perhaps you can take a first step to try to eradicate that. "

" 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. "

" I have a personal philosophy in life: If somebody else can do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And what I want to do is find things that would represent a unique contribution to the world - the contribution that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make happen. Those are my priorities in life. "

" Science is an enterprise that should be cherished as an activity of the free human mind. Because it transforms who we are, how we live, and it gives us an understanding of our place in the universe. "

" It's actually the minority of religious people who rejects science or feel threatened by it or want to sort of undo or restrict the... where science can go. The rest, you know, are just fine with science. And it has been that way ever since the beginning. "

" Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I'm small but I'm also big. I'm big because I'm connected to the universe, and the universe is connected to me. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Think

Perspective

" For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Mountains

Moon

" I try to show the public that chemistry, biology, physics, astrophysics is life. It is not some separate subject that you have to be pulled into a corner to be taught about. "

" What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic. "

" I want to know what dark matter and dark energy are comprised of. They remain a mystery, a complete mystery. No one is any closer to solving the problem than when these two things were discovered. "

" We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

War

Explore

" Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow's problems flow. "

" What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that. "

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

" I think the greatest of people in society carved niches that represented the unique expression of their combinations of talents, and if everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combinations of talents in this world, our society would be transformed overnight. "

" 'Cosmos' is an occasion to bring everything that I have, all of my capacity to communicate. We may go to the edge of the universe, but we're going to land right on you: in your heart, in your soul, in your mind. My goal is to have people know that they are participants in this great unfolding cosmic story. "

" If we find life out there, and it's not us, we will deem it not intelligent. But what may be equally as likely is that we find life that's vastly more intelligent than we are. If that's the case, we are putty in their hands. "

" The need to create a new taxonomy that isn't just applying to our own solar system will become so evident and apparent that something will come out of it. I'm sure of it, even if it's not tomorrow. "

" 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

Long

Universe

" I'm perennially intrigued how people who lead largely evidence-based lives can, in a belief-based part of their mind, be certain that an invisible, divine entity created an entire universe just for us, or that the government is stockpiling space aliens in a secret desert location. "

" Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up. "

" 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. "