Top 500 Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Down there between our legs, it’s like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

52. “The only way you can invent tomorrow is if you break out of the enclosure that the school system has provided for you by the exams written by people who are trained in another generation.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

53. “I’m often asked whether I believe in Global Warming. I now just reply with the question: “Do you believe in Gravity?””

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

54. “Our five senses are faulty data-taking devices, and they need help.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

55. “Claiming there is no other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming there are no whales in the ocean.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

56. “One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you’re right but not enough to know you’re wrong.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

57. “For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

58. “The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

59. “Scientific inquiry shouldn’t stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

60. “What I’m saying is, when different experiments give you the same result, it is no longer subject to your opinion. That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

61. “No one is dumb who is curious.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

62. “Why can’t we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What’s our excuse?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

63. “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

64. “People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn’t understand. It’s a sense of empowerment.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

65. “Does the full moon affect people’s behavior, you ask? Yup. It makes people think the full moon affects people’s behavior.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

66. “I think if everyone had the luxury to pursue a life of exactly what they love, we would all be ranked as visionaries and brilliant.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

67. “We are star dust in the highest exalted way, called by the universe, reaching out to the universe.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

68. “Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

69. “What are the lessons to be learned from this journey of the mind through the universe? That humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos. Have a nice day.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

70. “Quantum physics fluctuates all the time. But now the fluctuations are not just particles coming into and out of existence, which happens all the time. It’s whole universes coming into and out of existence.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

71. “Perhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what’s going on in the sky.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

72. “Extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility are two equal ways of not having to think at all. And I don’t think I’m the first to say that.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

73. “Our nation is turning into an idiocracy.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

74. “Physics is the only profession in which prophecy is not only accurate but routine.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

75. “My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

76. “I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

77. “What would aliens say when told earthlings shift clocks twice a year to fool themselves into thinking there’s more sunlight?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

78. “In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemies. And when you’re surrounded by carnivores, one of the best strategies is to fade into the background and disappear.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

79. “As children we all wonder – we wonder all the time. And that gets lost in adulthood. It gets beaten out, it gets filtered out or diluted out.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

80. “I’m a little fatigued of adults saying we’ve got to worry about the kids. And these are the same adults that don’t know science and are running things and wielding resources and legislation.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

81. “Society needs to see science not as a luxury of funding but as a fundamental activity that drives enlightenment, economics, and security.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

82. “Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

83. “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

84. “That is a big question we all have: are we alone in the universe? And exoplanets confirm the suspicion that planets are not rare.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

85. “In physics, opinions don’t matter, only demonstrated experiments. The day the fellow succeeds, if ever, he won’t need anybody else’s opinion.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

86. “When you innovate, you create new industries that then boost your economy. And when you create new industries and that becomes part of your culture, your jobs can’t go overseas because no one else has figured out how to do it yet.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

87. “Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we are pioneers, or discoverers, or adventurers. We went to the Moon because it was the militaristically expedient thing to do.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

88. “We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out – and we have only just begun.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

89. “There is no true understanding of Biology without Chemistry. And there’s no true understanding of Chemistry without Physics.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

90. “Astronauts are the only kind of celebrity I know who can have a line of people waiting for their autograph, even if the line of people does not know in advance the astronaut’s name.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

91. “The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

92. “I agree that we should go back to the moon and on to Mars. We should treat all objects in the solar system, including comets and asteroids, as exploration targets.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

93. “Like no other science, astrophysics cross-pollinate s the expertise of chemists, biologists, geologists and physicists, all to discover the past, present, and future of the cosmos-and our humble place within it.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

94. “When I reach to the edge of the universe, I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery, there are times when, at least for now, one must be content to love the questions themselves.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

95. “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

96. “I don’t want to go into space because of war. I think we would if it was triggered. If China said they want to put military bases on Mars, we’d be at Mars in two years. That would be quick. I don’t want that to be the reason.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

97. “In the end, it’s the people who are curious who change the world.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

98. “You can make a stack high enough to reach the moon and back, and only then will you have used your 100 billion hamburgers. This is terrifying news to cows.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

99. “If there were biologists among the extremophiles organisms that live in extreme conditions, they would surely classify themselves as normal and any life that thrived in room temperature as an extremophile.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

100. “It’s short-sighted to think ads won’t one day end up wherever humans are – even the moon.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson