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

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
Lacked
Extinct
Dinosaurs
Thumbs
Program
Build
Space
Opposable
Today
Brainpower

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they've beaten our top human chess champions.
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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To learn more about science, turn off your electronic device and go outside and look around a bit. Nature is calling you. Go on. The internet will still be here.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If Earth ever suffers a runaway greenhouse effect (like what has happened on Venus), then our atmosphere would trap excess amounts of solar energy, the air temperature would rise, and the oceans would swiftly evaporate into the atmosphere as they sustained a rolling boil. This would be bad.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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95, 96 percent of all that drives the universe has no known origin.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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We're quite happy with our Big Bang description of cosmic origins. But actually, the Big Bang accounts for what happened only after the beginning. The beginning itself, and especially what happened before, remains the biggest mystery of all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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With one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) that all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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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The number of people in the world engaged in this search for catastrophic impactors totals one or two dozen. How long into the future are you willing to protect Homo sapiens on Earth? Before you answer that question, take a detour to Arizona's Meteor Crater during your next vacation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.
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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Feeling a little small? Well, in the context of the cosmos, we are small.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If you're a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you're not going to be a good scientist.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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George Bush, within a week of this [the 9/11 attacks], in a speech, attempting to distinguish US from the Muslim fundamentalists, said Our God is the God who named the stars. The problem is: two-thirds of all stars that have names, have Arabic names. I don't think he knew this. That would confound the point that he was making.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Access to science is greater than ever before. There are more vehicles out there that grant the public access to science. Not to mention the Internet.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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We're talking about a being whose very existence challenges our own sense of priority in the universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The history of exploration across nations and across time is not one where nations said, 'Let's explore because it's fun.' It was, 'Let's explore so that we can claim lands for our country, so that we can open up new trade routes let's explore so we can become more powerful.'
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I as an astrophysicist, see the universe, feel the universe, smell the universe every day. Every day. And for people to say, I'm cool, I'm right here, it's all I need.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I'm not a scientist, I was not a good science student, I felt effectively alienated from science throughout my young life, and it was only when I became an adult that I began to really appreciate from a completely different angle the power of science.
Neil deGrasse Tyson