Quote

I don't want to die ... I don't want to die poor. Two great motivators in the history of human cultures.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Human
Humans
Great
Cultures
Dies
Poor
History
Culture
Two

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Image
Santa knows Physics: Of all colors, Red Light penetrates fog best. That's why Benny the Blue-nosed reindeer never got the gig.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Only when you question does society move or advance at all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
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
Image
Society needs to see science not as a luxury of funding but as a fundamental activity that drives enlightenment, economics, and security.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
If God to you is where science has yet to tread, then God is an ever-receding pocket.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Emotional truths woven by lawyers in the court of law are apparently more important than the truths of actual events. I have grown to fear for those whose innocence became trapped within the legal system.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
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
Image
Photons are accurately and legitimately described as waves and particles at the same time. They are genuine wavicles.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
That the north star is the brightest in the night sky. I'd guess about 9 out of 10 people think this. But it does not require a grant from the National Science Foundation to learn the answer. The North Star is not even in the top 40 in the night sky. It's the 49th brightest star. Rather dull and boring by most measures.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
When you're advancing a frontier it stimulates creativity to find solutions.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
But to carve the Grand Canyon, Earth required millions of years. To excavate Meteor Crater, the universe, using a sixty-thousand-ton asteroid traveling upward of twenty miles per second, required a fraction of a second. No offense to Grand Canyon lovers, but for my money, Meteor Crater is the most amazing natural landmark in the world.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
If cosmological theory were dominated by women, who are no strangers to cycles, how can we know for sure that we wouldn't then be told that the oscillating universe is the more aesthetically fulfilling alternative?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Once something is answered, then there's another question. Hence the eternal quest.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
The past is another planet.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Newton came up with Newton's laws of motion and gravity. They worked. They were working.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
When I needed to overcome the low expectations of others or the bias that would be expressed in one circumstance or another, I'd keep on keeping on. And I climb over the obstacle, go around it, dig under it, fly over it. That's what kept me going. Otherwise I would have never been an astrophysicist.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
On Venus you could cook a 16-inch pepperoni pizza in seven seconds, just by holding it out to the air. (Yes, I did the math.)
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
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
Image
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