Top 500 Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “The evidence all points to the fact that we occupy not a well-mannered clockwork universe, but a destructive, violent, and hostile zoo.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

452. “There are no articles any more that dream about the cities of tomorrow.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

453. “Space exploration may pull in the talent, but war pays the bills.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

454. “I bought it, I read it, and I heeded its advice. I remain unabducted.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

455. “Deep in the world of atomic nuclei, life is not always tranquil.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

456. “If a huge genetic gap separated us from our closest relative in the animal kingdom, we could justifiably celebrate our brilliance. We might be entitled to walk around thinking we’re distant and distinct from our fellow creatures. But no such gap exists. Instead, we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

457. “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” One thing quarks do have going for them: all their names are simple – something chemists, biologists, and especially geologists seem incapable of achieving when naming their own stuff.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

458. “That means some of the air you just breathed passed through the lungs of Napoleon, Beethoven, Lincoln, and Billy the Kid.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

459. “Sir William Herschel was the first person to discover a planet beyond those easily visible to the naked eye, and he was ready to name it after the King – always a safe bet when you are his subject. Had Sir William succeeded, the planet list would read: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and George.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

460. “The word “lepton” derives from the Greek leptos, meaning “light” or “small.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

461. “I’m fascinated by the deaths of stars and the havoc they wreak on their environments.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

462. “The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

463. “To learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

464. “This leads me to ask how it came to be that Pluto is Mickey’s dog, but Mickey is not Pluto’s mouse. Something is awry in the taxonomic class of mammals in the Disney universe. I.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

465. “Collectively, these findings tell us it’s conceivable that life began on Mars and later seeded life on Earth, a process known as panspermia.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

466. “Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they’ve beaten our top human chess champions.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

467. “Yes, not only humans but also every other organism in the cosmos, as well as the planets or moons on which they thrive, would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you’re made of detritus. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

468. “All of the full moons for the entire year are special in that they have particular names.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

469. “The exact orbit of Earth is controlled by the Sun’s mass and the mass of all remaining planets. An object’s mass and its distance is all we need to know to completely determine the effects of its gravity on Earth.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

470. “As an educator, I think educators should meet the people wherever they are. Don’t even ask them to come half-way. Find them where they are, and sit on a couch with them.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

471. “And what happens when you stop innovating? Everyone else catches up, your jobs go overseas, and then you cry foul: Ooohh, they’re paying them less over there, and the playing field is not level. Well, stop whining and start innovating.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

472. “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 the other.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

473. “Dark matter is dark; that means it does not interact with photons.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

474. “WhenIWasYourAge: It took a week to learn whether your photos came out okay.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

475. “The urge to want some bit of information to be true often clouds our ability to assess why that information may be false.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

476. “So lambda’s sole job was to oppose gravity within Einstein’s model, keeping the universe in balance, resisting the natural tendency for gravity to pull the whole universe into one giant mass.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

477. “There are countless space activities that would be no less exciting than the moon missions were, I have no doubt. The search for life on Mars, for example.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

478. “To earn the right to be criticized on a scientific level is a high compliment indeed.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

479. “And behold the greatest mystery of them all: an unopened can of diet Pepsi floats in water while an unopened can of regular Pepsi sinks.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

480. “The closest anybody has come is to presume dark energy is a quantum effect – where the vacuum of space, instead of being empty, actually seethes with particles and their antimatter counterparts. They pop in and out of existence in pairs, and don’t last long enough to be measured.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

481. “Swiss-American astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

482. “Speaking as just simply an American who cares about the economic health of our country, I see one of the surest ways to bring wealth and prosperity to the country is to innovate in science and technology.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

483. “There’s no denying the public’s appetite for cosmic discovery.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

484. “When something glows from being heated, it emits light in all parts of the spectrum, but will always peak somewhere.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

485. “Looking more closely at Earth’s atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, and other components of smog from the burning of fossil fuels. If the curious aliens happen to be socially, culturally, and technologically more advanced than we are, then they will surely interpret these biomarkers as convincing evidence for the absence of intelligent life on Earth.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

486. “Your body has to come up with about 100 watts of energy to keep yourself warm.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

487. “The universe is knowable...”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

488. “Humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were ’reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

489. “You could, in principle, perform this stunt if you managed to let forth a powerful and sustained exhaust of flatulence.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

490. “What we know is that the matter we have come to love in the universe – the stuff of stars, planets, and life – is only a light frosting on the cosmic cake, modest buoys afloat in a vast cosmic ocean of something that looks like nothing.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

491. “These early, single-celled organisms unwittingly transformed Earth’s carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into one with sufficient oxygen to allow aerobic organisms to emerge and dominate the oceans and land.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

492. “To the scientist, the universality of physical laws makes the cosmos a marvelously simple place.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

493. “You need to live in a nation whose government values the search to understand humanity’s place in the universe.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

494. “Decade by decade: estimates of Pluto’s size got smaller and smaller.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

495. “People like death and mayhem.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

496. “The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave – an indication that perhaps flag waving and space exploration do not mix.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

497. “How about methane? It too is chemically unstable, and yes, some of it is anthropogenic, but as we’ve seen, methane has nonliving agents as well.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

498. “I long for a civilization to develop a level of science literacy, so that we can become better shepherds of our future on this planet.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

499. “If one evening you feel sad enough to cry, look up. Your tears will not fall and the starry night may bring joy to your soul.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

500. “These largely empty volumes of space – the far-rural regions of each galaxy – contain too little visible matter to explain the anomalously high orbital speeds of the tracers.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson