Top 500 Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

152. “The day that you stop looking – because you’re content God did it – I don’t need you in the lab. You’re useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

153. “Time to get cosmic. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

154. “Doing what has never been done before is intellectually seductive, whether or not we deem it practical.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

155. “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

156. “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

157. “We went to the moon and discovered earth.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

159. “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.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

160. “Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

161. “You realize when you know how to think, it empowers you far beyond those who only know what to think.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

162. “Wanna lose 1200 Calories a month? Drink a liter of ice water a day. You burn the energy just raising the water to body temp.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

163. “When Kennedy said, ‘Let’s go to the moon,’ we didn’t yet have a vehicle that wouldn’t kill you on launch. He said we’ll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

164. “The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

165. “Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

166. “Some air you inhale was exhaled by Cleopatra.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

167. “And yes, every one of our body’s atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago. We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out – and we have only just begun.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

169. “So not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

170. “Private enterprise can never lead a space frontier. It’s not possible because a space frontier is expensive, it has unknown risks and it has unquantified risks.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

171. “Many people feel small because they’re small and the universe is big, but I feel big.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

172. “Imagination alone is not enough, because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

173. “Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

174. “The National Air and Space Museum is unlike any other place on this planet. If you’re hosting visitors from another country and they want to know what single museum best captures what it is to be American, this is the museum you take them to. Here they can see the 1903 Wright Flyer, the 1927 Spirit of St. Louis, the 1926 Goddard rocket, and the Apollo 11 command module – silent beacons of exploration, of a few people willing to risk their lives for the sake of discovery. Without.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

175. “The limits on your enlightenment come not from the age you stopped going to school but from the age you stopped being curious.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

176. “When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

177. “Revelation replaced investigation.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

178. “All the traditional STEM fields, the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, are stoked when you dream big in an agency such as NASA.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

179. “85 percent of the gravity of the universe has a point of origin about which we know nothing.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

180. “I want to encourage people to not think in terms of gifts, but think in terms of, wow. You work hard to succeed at that, because that’s exactly what I do.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

181. “If aliens did visit us, I’d be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

182. “Your center of mass is a place you cannot visit but you always carry with you. Like memories, it is part of life’s baggage.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

183. “Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

184. “Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without that knowledge, without that capacity to think, you can easily become a victim of people who seek to take advantage of you.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

185. “Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

186. “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

187. “With no gravitational force to work against, your body not only doesn’t need the same amount of muscle and bone, it starts breaking them down. As on Earth, so in space: use it or lose it. And exercise may not solve the problem.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

188. “I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religions document.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

189. “After 50 years of television, there’s no other conclusion the aliens could draw, but that most humans are neurotic, death-hungry, dysfunctional idiots.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

190. “I’ve accomplished enough in life so that I do not fear death.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

191. “If it’s a new planet, sign me up. I’m tired of driving around the block, boldly going where hundreds have gone before in orbit around earth-give me a place to go and I’ll go.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

192. “What are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

193. “And extracting one molecule’s signature in spectral analysis from the rest of the signatures is hard work, sort of like picking out the sound of your toddler’s voice in a roomful of screaming children during playtime. It’s hard, but you can do it.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

194. “For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

195. “UV is bad for molecules because its high energy breaks the bonds between a molecule’s constituent atoms. That’s why UV is bad for you, too: it’s always best to avoid things that decompose the molecules of your flesh.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

196. “The worst thing that ever happened to America was the 19th Amendment.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

197. “I’m not criticizing the science in Star Wars. That’s a waste of everybody’s time.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

198. “In modern times, if the sole measure of what’s out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

199. “Countless women are alive today because of ideas stimulated by a design flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

200. “To believe in a universe as young as 6- or 7,000 years old, is to extinguish the light of most of the galaxy.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson