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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

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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 5
Actor
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Philosopher
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Neil Tyson
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More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If there's someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.
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Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.
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If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.
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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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You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?
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What are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?
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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
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If God to you is where science has yet to tread, then God is an ever-receding pocket.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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As children we all wonder - we wonder all the time. And that gets lost in adulthood. It gets beaten out, it gets filtered out or diluted out.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Dark matter and dark energy are two things we measure in the universe that are making things happen, and we have no idea what the cause is.
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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That is a big question we all have: are we alone in the universe? And exoplanets confirm the suspicion that planets are not rare.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I can tell you about the universe, but she feels it and when you feel the universe, it has a whole other meaning to you. Otherwise, you just put a Wiki page on camera. You can learn something, but it won't mean anything to you later on.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I don't need my name anywhere.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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It's progress I think, that science has joined philosophy, metaphysics & religion as subjects drunk people argue about in bars.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I think we are all the sum of that which has happened in our lives. And if you're successful, it would be wrong to think that you'd be more successful had something been easier. That's not a given.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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All information is good, even when it is bad.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The discovery of any kind of life [in Space] at all would be a tremendous watershed moment in biology, as well as all of science.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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This fear factor, this war driver is a very strong one and it's been with the species ever since the beginning and it motivated the Great Wall of China. War can be aggressive or defensive, right? So it motivated the Great Wall of China. Our space program was reactive to Russia.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If it's a new planet, sign me up. I'm tired of driving around the block, boldly going where hundreds have gone before in orbit around earth-give me a place to go and I'll go.
Neil deGrasse Tyson