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I lose sleep at night wondering whether we are intelligent enough to figure out the universe. I don't know.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 5
Actor
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Physicist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Teacher
Trekkie
The Bronx
New York City
Neil Tyson
Whether
Wondering
Universe
Figure
Night
Intelligent
Enough
Figures
Lose
Loses
Wonder
Sleep

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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We are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That's kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It's not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I try to keep this in mind when tied in to a rope 75 feet up in a tree... The history of ideas about our place in the universe has been a long series of let-downs for those who like to believe we are special.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The miniaturization of electronics, which ultimately was driven by the marketplace, was started by NASA, because it costs money to get something into orbit. So you want to trim your electronics, miniaturize your electronics, miniaturize your satellites.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I object to religion in science classrooms not because it's religion but because it's not science.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Just before I said I wanted to be an astronomer I said I wanted to be a baseball player. I was quite athletic at the time, probably because I was bigger than other kids, and if you're bigger than other kids and you're 11 you win everything.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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
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I like seeing how people have succeeded when others would have presumed they would have failed, and others just go along with whatever everyone else does.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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
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One of the greatest features of science is that it doesn't matter where you were born, and it doesn't matter what the belief systems of your parents might have been: If you perform the same experiment that someone else did, at a different time and place, you'll get the same result.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I can't think that leaving Earth once is enough.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Once you've got the makings of a star, gravity draws leftover gas and dust into a giant swirling disk. The dust continues to stick together, clumping into rocky asteroids, which eventually become orbiting rocky planets. And voila: a solar system!
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I recognize that there's an appetite that I'm now serving, and I'm happy to do so. I think it means quite a bit that science has achieved this level of public interest and access. And so I'm simultaneously astonished every day upon recognizing this, and I think it's a good sign for the country and possibly for the world.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I would rather enlighten the electorate so that when it's time for them to put somebody in Congress, it will be self-evident that they will embrace the message and tools and discovery of science in a way that can transform our culture and even our civilization.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I want to create the airplane that flies in the rarified atmosphere of Mars. This is what galvanizes a generation to want to become scientists and engineers in the first place, not we need a scientist to develop a plane that's 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I think we are all the sum of that which has happened in our lives. And if you're successful, it would be wrong to think that you'd be more successful had something been easier. That's not a given.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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In the New Testament, Thomas Jefferson cut out everything that was mystical, magical, miracle - physically with scissors - and then pasted in all that remained, such as Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.
Neil deGrasse Tyson