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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
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Physicist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Teacher
Trekkie
The Bronx
New York City
Neil Tyson
Science
Anywhere
Else
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Earth
Species
Might
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Humans
Smart
Width
Much
Hair
Chimpanzees
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Evolutionary
Universe
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More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.
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The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.
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Deep in the world of atomic nuclei, life is not always tranquil.
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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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Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Some air you inhale was exhaled by Cleopatra.
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It seems that we're better at finding someone to blame for our problems than we are at finding creative solutions to fix them.
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If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy.
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The world, I think, has too many late-night talk shows.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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UV is bad for molecules because its high energy breaks the bonds between a molecule's constituent atoms. That's why UV is bad for you, too: it's always best to avoid things that decompose the molecules of your flesh.
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In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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You should chose your heroes a-la carte. Picking and choosing from one and then another, thereby assembling a kind of composite hero. That way when you discover something reprehensible about any one of them it matters nothing to you because that's not the part of them that piqued your interest.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Grab something off the shelf that's on the spaceship-an ashtray, it doesn't matter what. Because I can tell you, if they flew here from another galaxy, no matter what you've pulled off the shelf, it'll be unlike anything we have on Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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It's quite literally true that we are star dust, in the highest exalted way one can use that phrase. ...I bask in the majesty of the cosmos. I use words, compose sentences that sound like the sentences I hear out of people that had revelation of Jesus, who go on their pilgrimages to Mecca.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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It could be that these other civilizations, if they are far more advanced intellectually than we are, would not even measure our existence as a blip on the intelligence radar. They could be so advanced that we are to them what worms are to us.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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No one wants to die, and no one wants to die poor. These are the two fundamental truths that transcend culture, they transcend politics, they transcend economic cycles.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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As a citizen, as a public scientist, I can tell you that Einstein essentially overturned a so strongly established paradigm of science, whereas Darwin didn't really overturn a science paradigm.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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All of the full moons for the entire year are special in that they have particular names.
Neil deGrasse Tyson