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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
Program
Build
Space
Opposable
Today
Brainpower
Lacked
Extinct
Dinosaurs
Thumbs

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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As important as the civil rights movement was, I think what will rise to the top is that we left Earth in that time.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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A supernova is one of the most powerful explosions in the universe. It's so luminous, it can be seen across billions of light years. It releases as much energy in an instant as our sun will produce over its 10-billion-year lifetime.
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Give a kid a book, and you change the world. In a way, even the universe.
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If factual information upsets you, then you are creating a world that is not embracing objective truths, and that's not how you advance a democracy.
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If we want to unlock the secret behind the origin of our sun and its planets, it would be helpful to find some remnants from the birth itself, an event that took place about four-and-a-half-billion years ago.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I don't want people to say, 'Something is true because Tyson says it is true.' That's not critical thinking.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Let's create a World's Fair that captures everybody's visions of tomorrow together and let's celebrate that vision. Let's have articles on it with illustrators imagining how we'd be living differently.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I want and need the artist to take me to new places, and the new place that Van Gogh took me not the sky as it is but the sky as he felt it. And the more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.
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The past is another planet.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If the people of Comic-Con ruled the world...then tomorrow would be invented every day.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Ever since there have been people, there have been explorers, looking in places where other hadn't been before. Not everyone does it, but we are part of a species where some members of the species do, to the benefit of us all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The universe has really never made things in ones. The Earth is special and everything else is different? No, we’ve got seven other planets. The sun? No, the sun is one of those dots in the night sky. The Milky Way? No, it’s one of a hundred billion galaxies. And the universe - maybe it’s countless other universes.
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The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Only when you question does society move or advance at all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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When you're enlightened, you don't have to reference other people, because you yourself are enlightened. And that's a better Earth. People can make more informed decisions politically, culturally, personally.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Where there's water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it's bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Revelation replaced investigation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If you are that person, you are more likely to believe that God cured you, this invisible force, creator of the universe, cured you, than that you had three idiotic doctors diagnose you. ... I taught physics to pre-med students who became doctors. Not all of them are smart, I assure you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.
Neil deGrasse Tyson