Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson

"I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge."
146 Quotes
"I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"When we see animals doing remarkable things, how do we know if we're simply seeing tricks or signs of real intelligence? Are talented animals just obeying commands, or do they have some kind of deeper understanding? One of the biggest challenges for animal researchers is to come up with tests that can distinguish between the two."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"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
"For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"I can't tell you how many people say they were turned off from science because of a science teacher that completely sucked out all the inspiration and enthusiasm they had for the course."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"I don't know anybody who said, 'I love that teacher, he or she gave a really good homework set,' or 'Boy, that was the best class I ever took because those exams were awesome.' That's not what people want to talk about. It's not what influences people in one profession or another."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"I'm on a crusade to get movie directors to get their science right because, more often than they believe, the science is more extraordinary than anything they can invent."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"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
"While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"You can't train kids in a world where adults have no concept of what science literacy is. The adults are gonna squash the creativity that would manifest itself, because they're clueless about what it and why it matters. But science can always benefit from the more brains there are that are thinking about it - but that's true for any field."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"One of the greatest features of science is that it doesn't matter where you were born, and it doesn't matter what the belief systems of your parents might have been: If you perform the same experiment that someone else did, at a different time and place, you'll get the same result."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"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
"We think scientific literacy flows out of how many science facts can you recite rather than how was your brain wired for thinking. And it's the brain wiring that I'm more interested in rather than the facts that come out of the curriculum or the lesson plan that's been proposed."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"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
"What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed; no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh."
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
"Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
"I'm often asked by parents what advice can I give them to help get kids interested in science? And I have only one bit of advice. Get out of their way. Kids are born curious. Period."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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