Quotes from Neil deGrasse Tyson

I would teach how science works as much as I would teach what science knows. I would assert (given that essentially, everyone will learn to read) that science literacy is the most important kind of literacy they can take into the 21st century. I would undervalue grades based on knowing things and find ways to reward curiosity. In the end, it's the people who are curious who change the world.

When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.

Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination

So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?

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.

Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?

When students cheat on exams it's because our school system values grades more than students value learning.

Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.

As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.

Yes, Einstein was a badass.

Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive

Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

I love the smell of the universe in the morning.

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.

Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.

God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

Looking more closely at Earth's atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, and other components of smog from the burning of fossil fuels. If the curious aliens happen to be socially, culturally, and technologically more advanced than we are, then they will surely interpret these biomarkers as convincing evidence for the absence of intelligent life on Earth.

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.

Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.

Our nation is turning into an idiocracy.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

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

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?

Science is not just about seeing, it's about measuring, preferably with something that's not your own eyes, which are inextricably conjoined with the baggage of your brain. That baggage is more often than not a satchel of preconceived ideas, post-conceived notions, and outright bias.