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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
Build
Space
Opposable
Today
Brainpower
Lacked
Extinct
Dinosaurs
Thumbs
Program

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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People put clips of me up. There are quotes from me. I've written books, of course. I'm on Twitter. There are dozens of ways to consume my offerings, and a lecture in a large venue is really only just one of them. So I have no concerns about how much access people would have to me no matter what is the capacity of your pocketbook.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I love the future we might invent for ourselves that I have not yet dreamt of.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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.'
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I am not the most annoying person to bring to a movie 'cause I basically hold it in and write about it later or tweet about it. The most annoying people to bring to movies, I think we all agree, are those who read the book first.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds, reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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There's no tradition of scientists knocking down the Sunday school door, telling the preacher, That might not necessarily be true. That's never happened. There're no scientists picketing outside of churches.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If I'm looking fit and I'm not, then I'm cheating.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Why can't we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What's our excuse?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I don't want to go into space because of war. I think we would if it was triggered. If China said they want to put military bases on Mars, we'd be at Mars in two years. That would be quick. I don't want that to be the reason.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Many people feel small because they're small and the universe is big, but I feel big.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Asteroids have us in our sight. The dinosaurs didn't have a space program, so they're not here to talk about this problem. We are, and we have the power to do something about it. I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy, to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not, and end up going extinct.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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No doubt, the most challenging class of questions in science is the origin of things.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Any time we are answer-driven rather than idea driven, we have lost the true meaning of education.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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One thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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WhenIWasYourAge: We had to open all doors by ourselves. None of them knew we were coming.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Everyone has all different experiences in school. I just know that throughout my life, at no time did any teacher ever point to me and say, hey. He'll go far.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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When I grew up I assembled my role models à la cart. I wanted to be an astrophysicist. If I tried to find a role model who grew up in the Bronx with my skin color who was an astrophysicist, I would never have become an astrophysicist.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The persistent failures of controlled, double-blind experiments to support the claims of parapsychology suggest that what's going on is nonsense rather than sixth sense.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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It’s short-sighted to think ads won’t one day end up wherever humans are - even the moon.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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All tweets are tasty. Any tweet anybody writes is tasty. So, I try to have each tweet not simply be informative, but have some outlook, some perspective that you might not otherwise had.
Neil deGrasse Tyson