Quotes from Neil deGrasse Tyson

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told. The

The universe has never made one of anything, so why would there even be one of itself?

If you removed all the arteries, veins, & capillaries from a person's body, and tied them end-to-end…the person will die.

Long ago Mars was an oasis of running water.Today the Martiansurfaceis a sterile,barren desert. Here on Earth, who knows what climactic knobs we unwittingly turn,which might one day render Earth as dry and lifeless as Mars. (From the cover of Old Poison by Joan Francis)

During the heat of the space race in the 1960s, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ballpoint pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of approximately $1 million US. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.

After 50 years of television, there's no other conclusion the aliens could draw, but that most humans are neurotic, death-hungry, dysfunctional idiots.

If one evening you feel sad enough to cry, look up. Your tears will not fall and the starry night may bring joy to your soul.

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.

Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.

The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree.

People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. And therein lies a fascinating dichotomy. "The universe always was," gets no respect as a legitimate answer to "What was around before the beginning?" But for many religious people, the answer, "God always was," is the obvious and pleasing answer to "What was around before God?

By the way, were we to find life-forms on Venus, we would probably call them Venutians, just as people from Mars would be Martians. But according to rules of Latin genitives, to be "of Venus" ought to make you a Venereal. Unfortunately, medical doctors reached that word before astronomers did. Can't blame them, I suppose. Venereal disease long predates astronomy, which itself stands as only the second oldest profession.

Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all. No judgment implied. Just an observation.

Don't know if it's good or bad that a Google search on "Big Bang Theory" lists the sitcom before the origin of the Universe

I get enormous satisfaction from knowing I'm doing something for society.

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.

True science literacy is less about what you know and more about how your brain is wired for asking questions.

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.

Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion.

In the beginning, there was physics. Physics describes how matter, energy, space, and time behave and interact with one another. The interplay of these characters in our cosmic drama underlies all biological and chemical phenomena. Hence everything fundamental and familiar to us earthlings begins with, and rests upon, the laws of physics. When we apply these laws to astronomical settings, we deal with physics writ large, which we call astrophysics.

Most places in the universe will kill life instantly—instantly! People say "Oh, the forces of nature are just right for life." Excuse me. Just look at the volume of the universe where you can't live. You will die instantly.

Each component of this trinity of human endeavor—science, religion, and art—lays powerful claim to our feelings of wonder, which derive from an embrace of the mysterious. Where mystery is absent, there can be no wonder.

One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're wright, but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong.

If the world is something you accept rather than interpret, then you're susceptible to the influence of charismatic idiots.