Quotes from Neil deGrasse Tyson

I'm told that when you're testing rockets and they fail on the launchpad, euphemisms like It was an experiment high in learning opportunities are deployed in your press conferences. But really it's just rockets suffering from projectile dysfunction. That's what it should be called: projectile dysfunction.

opposite direction of gravity, forcing the universe to expand faster than it otherwise would.

Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into believing that something is true when it is false, or that something is false when it is true.

So by looking in X-rays, you are seeing aspects of nature which we did not even suspect existed but which are very important in the formation, evolution, and dynamics of the structures in the universe.

But because the particle shower moves so fast relative to us and our detectors on Earth's surface, the muons experience the passage of time more slowly than we do.

If you travel fast, several weird things happen. One is that your inner time clock will appear to tick more slowly, as seen by all those who observe you. Your time "dilates.

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch." —Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut

the weak force controlling radioactive decay, the strong force binding the atomic nucleus, the electromagnetic force binding molecules, and gravity binding bulk matter.

The cosmic perspective is humble.

if everything you have learned is what everyone else knows, no one will ever beat a path to your door.

Al principio, era la física. La

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

Last I had kept count, there were fifty-six moons among the planets in the Solar System. Then I woke up one morning to learn that another dozen had been discovered around Saturn. After that incident, I decided to no longer keep track.

A fontos, ám ellentmondásos felvetés azt állítja, hogy a Földön található fajok egy kollektív organizmust alkotnak, ami folyamatosan (ám akaratlanul) úgy szabályozza a bolygó atmoszférájának összetételét és klímáját, hogy az biztosítsa az élet feltételeit – és ezzel a folyékony víz jelenlétét.

hard to make a time machine out of normal material in your garage by only gently curving spacetime

began to think of people not as the masters of space and time but as participants in a great cosmic chain of being

thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it.

most planets inhabited by intelligent observers are likely to be smaller than Earth

Voyager went further and also included a gold record album containing diverse sounds from mother Earth, including the human heartbeat, whale "songs," and musical selections from around the world, including the works of Beethoven and Chuck Berry. While this humanized the message, it's not clear whether alien ears would have a clue what they were listening to—assuming they have ears in the first place.

The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another.

The Coma cluster is also what we call a "relaxed" system. Please resist the image of a group of galaxies kicking back and listening to smooth jazz.

Astrophysics teaches us that we're not the center of the world.

But really we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.