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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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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
Left
Feet
Ancestor
Three
Millions
Stood
Fixated
Two
Ways
Ground
Parted
Look
Wonder
Million
Footprints
Looks
Eyes
Mines
Traces
Years
Half
Mine
Indicates
Way
Free
Standing
Footprint
Eye
Longer
Ancestors

More quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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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.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The tenacity of life is mind-boggling. We keep finding it where no one thought it could be.
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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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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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
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The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without that knowledge, without that capacity to think, you can easily become a victim of people who seek to take advantage of you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Publicly and among themselves biologists rightly celebrate the diversity of life on Earth... At the end of the day, however, their confession is heard by no one: they work with a single scientific sample-life on Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The greatest teachers are the ones that turn a B student into an A student, or a failing student into a B student.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of bullshit.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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The methods and tools of science perennially breach barriers, granting me confidence that our epic march of insight into the operations of nature will continue without end.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Revelation replaced investigation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Here's something that intrigues me: If you have faith, you believe regardless of the evidence, yet if there's ever evidence to support faith, everyone goes to it and points to it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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We are only intelligent by our own measures
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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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
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Quantum physics fluctuates all the time. But now the fluctuations are not just particles coming into and out of existence, which happens all the time. It's whole universes coming into and out of existence.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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People are really excited about robotic exploration. I understand the feeling there because, in fact, robots can do things humans can't. They can survive harsh conditions, they can explore places we would never go, plus you never actually have to bring them back.
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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We in astrophysics we think of the universe all the time. So to us, Earth is just another planet. From a distance, it's a speck. And I'm convinced that if everyone had a cosmic perspective you wouldn't have legions of armies waging war on other people because someone would say, Stop, look at the universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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It's better to understand something than to memorize something.
Neil deGrasse Tyson