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Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes - Page 7

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How many times have you heard a person in a workplace say, I wasn't trained for this! That's an impossible reaction from a physicist, who would say, instead, Cool. A problem I've never seen before. Let's see how I can

How many times have you heard a person in a workplace say, "I wasn't trained for this!" That's an impossible reaction from a physicist, who would say, instead, "Cool. A problem I've never seen before. Let's see how I can figure out how to solve it!"

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Impossible, Workplace, Problem
Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. November 13, 2011.

A common way to compute density is, of course, to take the ratio of an object's mass to its volume. But other types of densities exist, such as the resistance of somebody's brain to the imparting of common sense.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science, Common Sense, Brain
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.135, W. W. Norton & Company

Civilization just takes it as a given that the whole world was flooding. Then science came and you had geology and modern astrophysics, and time became well understood going back billions of years. So enlightened religious people, as a necessity, had to shed the magical elements of the Bible. A little known fact is that Thomas Jefferson did just that. There's something called the Jefferson Bible. It's not widely publicized because it sort of conflicts with certain people's ideas of what the founding fathers were.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Religious, Father, Years
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

There is no true understanding of Biology without Chemistry. And there's no true understanding of Chemistry without Physics.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Understanding, Chemistry, Physics
Twitter post from Apr 24, 2012

In whatever you choose to do, do it because it's hard, not because it's easy. Math and physics and astrophysics are hard. For every hard thing you accomplish, fewer other people are out there doing the same thing as you. That's what doing something hard means. And in the limit of this, everyone beats a path to your door because you're the only one around who understands the impossible concept or who solves the unsolvable problem.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Mean, Math, Doors

Eventually, the Sun will swell to occupy the entire sky as its expansion subsumes the orbit of earth. Earth's surface temperature will rise until it matches the 3,000-degree rarified outer layers of the expanded Sun.... But not to worry. We will surely go extinct for some other reason long before this scenario unfolds.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sky, Long, Worry

If you're interested in something, that's all that matters. You'll spend more time doing it, that than anything else, and possibly more time doing it than anybody else.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Matter, More Time, Ifs
Source: www.avclub.com

The idea that God resides in the unknown is what philosophers call the God of the gaps. And we have this thing called science, which marches on and makes discoveries in those gaps, ultimately closing gaps.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ideas, Discovery, Gaps
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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
Lonely, Religious, Science
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.353, W. W. Norton & Company

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Objective Truth, World, Imagine
Twitter post from Dec 27, 2014

Some morning while your eating breakfast and you need something new to think about, though, you might want to ponder the fact that you see your kids across the table not as they are but as they once were, about three nanoseconds ago.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Morning, Kids, Thinking
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.119, W. W. Norton & Company

We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
War, Moon, Dna

The Big Bang Theory: When geeky scientists can be main characters in a hit prime time series, you know there's hope for the world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Character, Bangs, World

In life and in the universe it's always best to keep looking up.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Universe
"Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's one-man mission". "60 minutes" with Charlie Rose, www.cbsnews.com. March 22, 2015.

Part of me thinks that I've been called by the universe, to get all sort of spiritual about it. Like, I've had no actual say in the matter. The universe found me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Spiritual, Thinking, Matter
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ignorance, Vaccines, Intellectual

Curiously, light-loving green plants reject the Sun's green light, reflecting it back at you, which is why they look green.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Green Plants, Light, Mind Blowing
Twitter post from Mar 17, 2012

If you find life on Europa [Jupiter's moon], like, what would you call it? Would it be, like, Europeans?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Jupiter, Ifs

If the Sun exploded, we wouldn't know about it for 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Light and gravity take that long to reach us. Then we would vaporize.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Light, Long, Sun

Jesus Christ rose up from the tomb. Well, he's the son of God, and now he's like God's spirit at this point. Why would a spirit need to move a rock? Why not just pass through the rock? But also, why wait for the guards to go to sleep?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Jesus, Moving, Sleep
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Believe, Ignorance, People
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Donald Goldsmith (2005). “Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution”, p.27, W. W. Norton & Company

Trillions of years into the future, when all stars are gone...all parts of the cosmos will cool to the same temperature as the ever-cooling background. At that time, space travel will no longer provide refuge because even Hell will have frozen over. We may then declare that the universe has died-not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Stars, Years, Space

When I shop for fruit & melons I like to hold a grape next to a cantaloupe & think of Earth next to Jupiter. Then I eat Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Thinking, Jupiter, Earth
Twitter post from Feb 21, 2014

Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds, reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Teacher, Stars, Community
"Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey/ Standing Up in the Milky Way". Documentary, March 9, 2014.

I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Religious, Believe, Science
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2000). “The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, Doubleday Books

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