I have a personal philosophy in life: If somebody else can do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And what I want to do is find things that would represent a unique contribution to the world - the contribution that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make happen. Those are my priorities in life.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Time Space Men

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

Very UN Thought

Where there's water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it's bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Life Art You

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

Technology Nature Life

We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Art Verse Us

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

Good Education Art

Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Future Dreams Wit

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

You Wed Ten

There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Great Education Than

Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Time Space Mom

No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Who Us Through

I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Life Intelligence Use

Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow's problems flow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science Art Which

If God is the mystery of the universe, these mysteries, we're tackling these mysteries one by one. If you're going to stay religious at the end of the conversation, God has to mean more to you than just where science has yet to tread.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science God You

Philosophically, the universe has really never made things in ones. The Earth is special and everything else is different? No, we've got seven other planets. The sun? No, the sun is one of those dots in the night sky. The Milky Way? No, it's one of a hundred billion galaxies. And the universe - maybe it's countless other universes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Space Art Way

Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science Poetry Intelligence

The universe is hilarious! Like, Venus is 900 degrees. I could tell you it melts lead. But that's not as fun as saying, 'You can cook a pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds.' And next time my fans eat pizza, they're thinking of Venus!

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Time You Yin

Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Technology Science You

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of 50 or 100 billion other galaxies in the universe. And with every step, every window that modern astrophysics has opened to our mind, the person who wants to feel like they're the center of everything ends up shrinking.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Wit Window Wind

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. That's what scientists do every day.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. 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 another. What the laws of physics say.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

We live in the kind of society where, in almost all cases, hard work is rewarded.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

There is no science in this world like physics. Nothing comes close to the precision with which physics enables you to understand the world around you. It's the laws of physics that allow us to say exactly what time the sun is going to rise. What time the eclipse is going to begin. What time the eclipse is going to end.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I'm small but I'm also big. I'm big because I'm connected to the universe, and the universe is connected to me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Any time scientists disagree, it's because we have insufficient data. Then we can agree on what kind of data to get; we get the data; and the data solves the problem. Either I'm right, or you're right, or we're both wrong. And we move on. That kind of conflict resolution does not exist in politics or religion.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Darwin's theory of evolution is a framework by which we understand the diversity of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' that you apply and say, 'What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years?' Biology isn't there yet with that kind of predictive precision.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Innovations in science and technology are the engines of the 21st-century economy; if you care about the wealth and health of your nation tomorrow, then you'd better rethink how you allocate taxes to fund science. The federal budget needs to recognize this.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Most gravity has no known origin. Is it some exotic particle? Nobody knows. Is dark energy responsible for expansion of the universe? Nobody knows.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Asteroids have us in our sight. The dinosaurs didn't have a space program, so they're not here to talk about this problem. We are, and we have the power to do something about it. I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy, to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not, and end up going extinct.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, investments in science and technology have proved to be reliable engines of economic growth. If homegrown interest in those fields is not regenerated soon, the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans have become accustomed will draw to a rapid close.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I have a personal philosophy in life: If somebody else can do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And what I want to do is find things that would represent a unique contribution to the world - the contribution that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make happen. Those are my priorities in life.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Carl Sagan spoke fluently between biology and geology and astrophysics and physics. If you move fluently across those boundaries, you realize that science is everywhere; science is not something you can step around or sweep under the rug.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you think of feelings you have when you are awed by something - for example, knowing that elements in your body trace to exploded stars - I call that a spiritual reaction, speaking of awe and majesty, where words fail you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you slid Pluto to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate that ice, and it would grow a tail. Now that's no kind of behavior for a planet.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

We live on this speck called Earth - think about what you might do, today or tomorrow - and make the most of it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson