Quote

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

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
Nothing
Chose
Carte
Matter
Heroes
Reprehensible
Kind
Discover
Composite
Something
Matters
Composites
Way
Hero
Assembling
Interest
Thereby
Another
Picking
Part
Choosing

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Image
The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Because we all just function, the rest of us, just go to work and come home artists make life bearable. They give perspectives on things we never knew you could have. They bring joy. They explore inner human emotion, and at its best, the full dynamic range of that emotion.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Who you are, where you've been and what you've done is all up here, captured and preserved in your memories. If you lost that - the story of your own origins - you'd lose your identity, your sense of self.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Right now people think God is dark energy and dark matter, the spirit. Go ahead and think that, but the day we can tell you exactly what it is - that it's gremlins in the vacuum of space or whatever - then what's your recourse at that point?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
You like to explore things, and your parents don't like it because it gets the pots and pans dirty, and because it's noisy - but for you it's fun, you're resting. You're actually doing experiments... Just tell your parents that they're experiments, and you want to become a scientist, and then they won't stop you from doing anything you want.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
The educated elite is not without their own actual snobbery. And I kind of an anti-elitist in that regard.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
It's my duty to enlighten people.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
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
Image
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
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
I want to create the airplane that flies in the rarified atmosphere of Mars. This is what galvanizes a generation to want to become scientists and engineers in the first place, not we need a scientist to develop a plane that's 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Science is like an inoculation against charlatans who would have you believe whatever it is they tell you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
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
Image
The universe's destiny has very little to do with the near-term destiny of Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
The trend lines in research and innovation look good for places such as India and China and less good for America as we go forward. So even if you're not enchanted by the prospect of cosmic discovery, the prospect of dying poor may be what it takes to understand the role of this adventure in the future of the natural world in which we live.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Asteroids have us in our sight. The dinosaurs didn't have a space program, so they're not here to talk about this problem. We are, and we have the power to do something about it. I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy, to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not, and end up going extinct.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
It's better to understand something than to memorize something.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Most of what Einstein said and did has no direct impact on what anybody reads in the Bible. Special relativity, his work in quantum mechanics, nobody even knows or cares. Where Einstein really affects the Bible is the fact that general relativity is the organizing principle for the Big Bang.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
Deep in the world of atomic nuclei, life is not always tranquil.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Image
People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.
Neil deGrasse Tyson