Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. His engaging presentations and popular books have inspired public interest in astronomy and space exploration. He has become a prominent advocate for science education and scientific literacy. Here are 215 of his quotes:

We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
If you start wielding a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. And maybe they're not. Maybe it's more subtle than that. And so your toolkit has to be able to morph into what is necessary for what it is that you confront at that moment. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Words that make questions may not be questions at all. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience. I think many people have that enthusiasm, but they are prevented from being teachers because they didn't go through the teacher mill. Now you have teachers who have been through the teacher mill, yet they have no capacity to inspire anyone at all. It's the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That's what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I'm optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren't still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you're in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Within one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) than all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all? View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that? View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going. View quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson