Top 500 Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “You have the illusion of free will, but, in fact, that illusion comes about because you don’t know the future. Because you are a prisoner of the present, forever locked in transition, between the past and the future.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

102. “A scientist is just a kid who never grew up.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

103. “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

104. “Access to science is greater than ever before. There are more vehicles out there that grant the public access to science. Not to mention the Internet.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

105. “No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

106. “Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow’s problems flow.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

107. “Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

108. “When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there’s nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

109. “We’re talking about a being whose very existence challenges our own sense of priority in the universe.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

110. “Science is not a subject you took in school. It’s life. We are wrapped by it, in it, with it.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

111. “I fear living a life where I could have accomplished something and didn’t. That’s what I fear. I don’t fear death.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

112. “To achieve this density of a neutron star at home, just cram a herd of 50 million elephants into the volume of a thimble.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

113. “Space enthusiasts are the most susceptible demographic to delusion that I have ever seen.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

114. “Perhaps we’ve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there’s no sign of intelligent life.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

115. “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

116. “Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

117. “Whether or not you can become great at something, you can always become better.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

118. “I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

119. “When NASA says they’re going into space, they don’t mean up and back. They mean orbit.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

120. “No matter what eyewitness testimony is in the court of law, it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

121. “Santa knows Physics: Of all colors, Red Light penetrates fog best. That’s why Benny the Blue-nosed reindeer never got the gig.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

122. “The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don’t expect.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

123. “In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

124. “It’s better to understand something than to memorize something.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

125. “The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

126. “The Big Bang Theory: When geeky scientists can be main characters in a hit prime time series, you know there’s hope for the world.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

127. “If cosmological theory were dominated by women, who are no strangers to cycles, how can we know for sure that we wouldn’t then be told that the oscillating universe is the more aesthetically fulfilling alternative?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

128. “The iron from that meteorite and the iron from your blood have common origin in the core of a star.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

129. “Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That’s a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

130. “In five billion years, the sun will expand and engulf our orbit as the charred ember that was once Earth vaporizes. Have a nice day.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

131. “I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

132. “Whether or not you can never become great at something, you can always become better at it. Don’t ever forget that! And don’t say “I’ll never be good”. You can become better! and one day you’ll wake up and you’ll find out how good you actually became.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

133. “Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

134. “A conspiracy theorist is a person who tacitly admits that they have insufficient data to prove their points. A conspiracy is a battle cry of a person with insufficient data.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

135. “Words that make questions may not be questions at all.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

136. “If the Sun exploded, we wouldn’t know about it for 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Light and gravity take that long to reach us. Then we would vaporize.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

137. “Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

138. “Kids are born curious about the world. What adults primarily do in the presence of kids is unwittingly thwart the curiosity of children.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

139. “Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

140. “I as an astrophysicist, see the universe, feel the universe, smell the universe every day. Every day. And for people to say, I’m cool, I’m right here, it’s all I need.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

141. “Italy valued cathedrals while Spain valued explorers. So worldwide, five times as many people speak Spanish than Italian.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

142. “It is the knowledge that I’m going to die that creates the focus that I bring to being alive; the urgency of accomplishment; the need to express love; now, not later. If we live forever, why ever even get out of bed in the morning? Cause you always have tomorrow. That’s not the kind of life I want to lead.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

143. “Everything we do, every thought we’ve ever had, is produced by the human brain. But exactly how it operates remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries, and it seems the more we probe its secrets, the more surprises we find.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

144. “There’s no shame in admitting what you don’t know. The only shame is pretending you know all the answers.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

145. “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.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

146. “God is an ever receding pocket of? scientific ignorance.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

147. “Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That’s why my public focus is primarily adults.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

148. “I don’t want people to say, ‘Something is true because Tyson says it is true.’ That’s not critical thinking.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

149. “If there’s something that someone else can do, let them do it. If I couldn’t do it uniquely, let someone else do it and I would get back to the lab.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

150. “We need more science in the world. Train me.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson