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" 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
Your
Tombstone
Same
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" Everyone should have their mind blown once a day. "
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" For me, the most fascinating interface is Twitter. I have odd cosmic thoughts every day and I realized I could hold them to myself or share them with people who might be interested. "
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" NASA has spin-offs, and it's a huge and very impressive list, including accurate and affordable LASIK eye surgery. "
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" Whether or not people go into space or serve the space industry, they will have the sensitivity to those fields necessary to stimulate unending innovation in the technological fields, and it's that innovation in the 21st century that will drive tomorrow's economies. "
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" I'm constantly claimed by atheists. I find this intriguing. In fact, on my Wiki page - I didn't create the Wiki page, others did, and I'm flattered that people cared enough about my life to assemble it - and it said, 'Neil deGrasse is an atheist.' "
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" If you get asteroids about a kilometer in size, those are large enough and carry enough energy into our system to disrupt transportation, communication, the food chains, and that can be a really bad day on Earth. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Energy
Communication
Food
" When an industry matures, it means it's not advancing, and of course the jobs go overseas. That's the obligation of the multi-national corporation: to put the factory where it can make the widget as cheap as possible. Don't get angry when a corporation does that; we've all bought into this concept. We live in a capitalistic society. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Cheap
Society
Possible
" The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrenching of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science
Space
Rest
" 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
Government
Risks
Space
" The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people who wrote checks were not. They had other motivations. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Exploration
History
People
" 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
Discovery
Moment
God
" Most gravity has no known origin. Is it some exotic particle? Nobody knows. Is dark energy responsible for expansion of the universe? Nobody knows. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Energy
Nobody
Universe
" 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
Know
Earth
Bad
" The only driver stronger than an economic argument to do something is the war argument, the I-don't-want-to-die argument. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Only
Argument
Stronger
" As an American, I grew up in an era where we led the world in everything. Everything! "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Everything
Where
World
" 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. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Path
Ideas
Focus
" I'm on a crusade to get movie directors to get their science right because, more often than they believe, the science is more extraordinary than anything they can invent. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right
Science
Believe
" I was an aspiring astrophysicist, and that's how I defined myself, not by my skin color. People didn't treat me as someone with science ambitions. They treated me as someone they thought was going to mug them, or who was a shoplifter. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Myself
Treat
Thought
" I was born the same week NASA was founded, so we're the same age and feel some of the same pains, joys, and frustrations. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Week
Age
Born
" 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
Good
Going
Data
" 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. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Hands
Intelligent
Find
" The universe is large and old, and the ingredients for life as we know it are everywhere, so there's no reason to think that Earth would be unique in that regard. Whether of not the life became intelligent is a different question, and we'll see if we find that. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Unique
Know
Life
" Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they've beaten our top human chess champions. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Top
Human
Computers
" 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
People
Space
Culture
" Let me tell you something about full moons: kids don't care about full moons. They'll play in a full moon, no worries at all. They only get scared of magic or werewolves from stupid adults and their stupid adult stories. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Care
Magic
Me
" Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Need
Political
People
" 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
You
Yourself
Want
" As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I Can
Space
Think
" It's part of our pop culture to give animals human personalities and talents. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Culture
Animals
Give
" 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. "
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Life
Chemistry
Biology