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" Not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed; no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" I want people to see that the cosmic perspective is simultaneously honest about the universe we live in and uplifting, when we realize how far we have come and how wonderful is this world of ours. "

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

" I study the universe. It's the second oldest profession. People have been looking up for a long time. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations - as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station. "

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

" There is no greater education than one that is self-driven. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" When a president promises something beyond his years in office, he is fundamentally unaccountable. It is not his budget that must finish the job. Another president inherits the problem, and it becomes a ball too easily dropped, a plan too easily abandoned, a dream too readily deferred. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" 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. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Keep in mind that if you take a tour through a hospital and look at every machine with on and off switch that is brought into the service of diagnosing the human condition, that machine is based on principles of physics discovered by a physicist in a machine designed by an engineer. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" 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. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don't get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" As history has shown, pure science research ultimately ends up applying to something. We just don't know it at the time. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not. "

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

" The chances that your tombstone will read 'Killed by Asteroid' are about the same as they'd be for 'Killed in Airplane Crash.' "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" Where there's water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it's bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" It's always interesting just to see how the human mind is relating to the natural universe, and what we try to make of it just so we can believe we understand what's going on. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

" 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

" Any time scientists disagree, it's because we have insufficient data. Then we can agree on what kind of data to get; we get the data; and the data solves the problem. Either I'm right, or you're right, or we're both wrong. And we move on. That kind of conflict resolution does not exist in politics or religion. "

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

" One of the symptoms of an absence of innovation is the fact that you lose your jobs. Everyone else catches up with you. They can do what you do better than you or cheaper than you. And in a multinational corporate-free market enterprise, it is the company's obligation to take the factory to a place where they can make it more cheaply. "

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson