If you’re looking for some insightful and thought-provoking quotes from one of the world’s most renowned astrophysicists, look no further than Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes. His words of wisdom are sure to motivate and inspire you to reach for the stars.
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City in 1958. Both of his parents were scientists, so he was exposed to science and math from a young age. Tyson attended public schools in the Bronx, and he was a good student. He was especially interested in science, and he decided to become a scientist himself.
Tyson attended Harvard University in 1976. He studied physics and astronomy, and he was a very talented student. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1980, and he then went to graduate school at Columbia University. He earned his PhD in astrophysics in 1988.
After graduate school, Tyson began teaching at Princeton University. He then moved to the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, where he became the director. Tyson is now one of the most famous scientists in the world, and he has written several books about science. He also appears on television and radio programs, and he is a regular speaker at universities and conferences.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most renowned scientists in the world. He has dedicated his life to educating people about science and making it more accessible to everyone. Tyson’s work in science has earned him numerous awards and accolades, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. Tyson’s passion for science is evident in everything he does, and he is an inspiration to aspiring scientists everywhere.
Here are some of Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes on science, education, and the universe.
55 Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
- “Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.”
2. “There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.”
3. “If the world is something you accept rather than interpret, then you’re susceptible to the influence of charismatic idiots.”
4. “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
5. “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.”
6. “Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.”
7. “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
8. “The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.”
9. “One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you’re right but not enough to know you’re wrong”
10. “Just because you can’t figure out how ancient civilizations built stuff, doesn’t mean they got help from Aliens.”
11. “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.”
12. “Down there between our legs, it’s like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?”
Famous Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
13. “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.”
15. “… there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”
16. “Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.”
17. “Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do.”
18. “We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.”
18. “Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.”
19. “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.”
20. “As the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance.”
21. “The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”
22. “Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination”
23. “It’s okay not to know all the answers. It’s better to admit our ignorance than to believe answers that might be wrong. Pretending to know everything, closes the door to finding out what’s really there.”
24. “I love the smell of the universe in the morning.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes On the Universe and science
25. “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.”
26. “Practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food. There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There’s no wild cows.”
27. “If the world is something you accept rather than interpret, then you’re susceptible to the influence of charismatic idiots.”
28. “My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.”
29. “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
30. “In modern times, if the sole measure of what’s out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.”
31. “When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.”
32. “People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.”
Thought-Provoking Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
33. “If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.”
34. “Some morning while your eating breakfast and you need something new to think about, though, you might want to ponder the fact that you see your kids across the table not as they are but as they once were, about three nanoseconds ago.”
35. “In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”
36.“No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.”
37. “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.”
38. “After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”
39. “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.”
40. “Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.”
41. “Scientific inquiry shouldn’t stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.”
42. “Science needs the light of free expression to flourish. It depends on the fearless questioning of authority, and the open exchange of ideas.”
43. “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”
44. “During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore — in part because it’s fun to do. But there’s a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us.”
45. “We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.”
46. “If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.”
47. “We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.”
48. “When students cheat on exams it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.”
49. “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.”
50. “Doing what has never been done before is intellectually seductive, whether or not we deem it practical.”
51. “We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.”
52. “In modern times, if the sole measure of what’s out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.”
53. “Science literacy is an important part of what it is to be an informed citizen of society.”
54. “When your reasons for believing something are justified ad hoc, you are left susceptible to further discoveries undermining the rationale for that belief.”
55. “A little known secret is that a physicist is one of the most employable people in the marketplace — a physicist is a trained problem solver. How many times have you heard a person in a workplace say, ‘I wasn’t trained for this!’ That’s an impossible reaction from a physicist, who would say, instead, ‘Cool.'”
54. “Our academic system rewards people who know a lot of stuff and generally we call those people smart, but at the end of the day who do you want: the person who can figure things out that they’ve never seen before or the person who can rattle off a bunch of facts?”
55. “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.”