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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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No doubt, the most challenging class of questions in science is the origin of things.
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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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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It's part of our pop culture to give animals human personalities and talents.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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When you are a hammer, all of your problems will look like nails to you.
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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My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Three and a half million years ago our ancestors - yours and mine - left these traces [indicates footprints]. We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.
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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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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Newton came up with Newton's laws of motion and gravity. They worked. They were working.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Our five senses are faulty data-taking devices, and they need help.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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We are star dust in the highest exalted way, called by the universe, reaching out to the universe
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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I don't have an issue with what you do in the church, but I'm going to be up in your face if you're going to knock on my science classroom and tell me they've got to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday school. Because that's when we're going to fight.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The show [ StarTalk ] was born as a radio program out of a National Science Foundation grant.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Perhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Chimpanzees are an evolutionary hair's-width from us.... Now imagine a species on Earth, or anywhere else, as smart compared with humans as humans are compared with chimpanzees. How much of the universe might they figure out?
Neil deGrasse Tyson