All Time Famous Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and science communicator who has held various roles at the Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, and in academia. He’s known for his research, writing (including columns in Natural History and StarDate), and public outreach through TV shows (NOVA ScienceNow, Cosmos), podcasts (StarTalk), and lectures. His passion for science has earned him recognition, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal and the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

1. “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

2. “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

3. “We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

4. “Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

5. “Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

6. “There’s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

7. “Math is the language of the universe. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

8. “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

9. “When students cheat on exams it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

10. “We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

11. “Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

12. “Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

13. “Science reveals that all life on Earth is one.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

14. “Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

15. “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

16. “If you’re scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

17. “I think of space not as the final frontier but as the next frontier. Not as something to be conquered but to be explored.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

18. “To learn more about science, turn off your electronic device and go outside and look around a bit. Nature is calling you. Go on. The internet will still be here.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

19. “Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

20. “The remarkable feature of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

21. “There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

22. “As areas of knowledge grow, so too do the perimeters of ignorance.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

23. “Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

24. “If your belief system is not founded in an objective reality, you should not be making decisions that affect other people.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

25. “Photography is a form of time travel.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

26. “I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

27. “Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

28. “Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what’s really there.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

29. “We are not figuratively, but literally Stardust.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

30. “If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

31. “If we have the power to turn another planet into Earth, then we have the power to turn Earth back into Earth.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

32. “One thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

33. “The day we stop exploring is the day we commit ourselves to live in a stagnant world, devoid of curiosity, empty of dreams.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

34. “Relativity. Gravity. Quantum. Electrodynamics. Evolution. Each of these theories is true, whether or not you believe in them.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

35. “When you are a hammer, all of your problems will look like nails to you.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

36. “All information is good, even when it is bad.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

37. “Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

38. “Aliens might be surprised to learn that in a cosmos with limitless starlight, humans kill for energy sources buried in the sand.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

39. “Give a kid a book, and you change the world. In a way, even the universe.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

40. “In life and in the universe it’s always best to keep looking up.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

41. “On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

42. “I think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

43. “It’s my duty to enlighten people.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

44. “Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

45. “When we try to look farther into the universe we come to what appears to be the end of space but actually it’s the beginning of time.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

46. “The most successful people recognize that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

47. “Feeling a little small? Well, in the context of the cosmos, we are small.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

48. “Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don’t know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

49. “Science is like an inoculation against charlatans who would have you believe whatever it is they tell you.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

50. “Science is a way of equipping yourself with the tools to interpret what happens in front of you.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

51. “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

52. “Down there between our legs, it’s like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?”
— 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. “For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

57. “The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

58. “Scientific inquiry shouldn’t stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

59. “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

60. “No one is dumb who is curious.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

61. “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

62. “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

63. “People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn’t understand. It’s a sense of empowerment.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

64. “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

65. “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

66. “We are stardust in the highest exalted way, called by the universe, reaching out to the universe.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

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

77. “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

78. “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

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. “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

89. “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

90. “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

91. “Like no other science, astrophysics cross-pollinates 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

92. “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

93. “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

94. “There is no true understanding of Biology without Chemistry. And there’s no true understanding of Chemistry without Physics.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

95. “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

96. “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

97. “If there were biologists among the extremophile 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

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

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

100. “In the end, it’s the people who are curious who change the world.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

101. “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

102. “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

103. “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

104. “A scientist is just a kid who never grew up.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

105. “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

106. “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

107. “We’re talking about a being whose very existence challenges our own sense of priority in the universe.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

108. “No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

112. “Space enthusiasts are the most susceptible demographic to delusion that I have ever seen.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

113. “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

114. “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

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

118. “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

119. “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

120. “The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don’t expect.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

121. “Whether or not you can become great at something, you can always become better.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

122. “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

123. “The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

124. “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

125. “The iron from that meteorite and the iron from your blood have a common origin in the core of a star.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

126. “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

127. “In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

128. “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

129. “I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

130. “Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

131. “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

132. “Words that make questions may not be questions at all.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

133. “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

134. “Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

135. “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

136. “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

137. “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

138. “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

139. “Italy valued cathedrals while Spain valued explorers. So worldwide, five times as many people speak Spanish than Italian.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

140. “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

141. “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

142. “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

143. “God is an ever-receding pocket of? scientific ignorance.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

144. “It’s better to understand something than to memorize something.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

145. “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

146. “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

147. “We need more science in the world. Train me.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

148. “WhenIWasYourAge: People were never “living with their disease.” We cured them. Or they died from it.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

149. “The past is another planet.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

150. “Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It’s the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds, reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

154. “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

155. “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

156. “We went to the moon and discovered Earth.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

157. “There’s no shame in admitting what you don’t know. The only shame is pretending you know all the answers.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

158. “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

159. “Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

160. “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

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. “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

163. “Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.”
— 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. “Some air you inhale was exhaled by Cleopatra.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

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

168. “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

169. “Many people feel small because they’re small and the universe is big, but I feel big.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

170. “Imagination alone is not enough, because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

171. “Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

172. “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

173. “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

174. “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

175. “When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

176. “Revelation replaced investigation.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

177. “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

178. “85 percent of the gravity of the universe has a point of origin about which we know nothing.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

179. “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

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. “Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

183. “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

184. “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

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. “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

187. “I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religious document.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

188. “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

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