Neil deGrasse Tyson: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Words that make questions may not be questions at all.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010, in response to the question "Why is there something instead of nothing", with the constraint of using ten words or less.
2010s
Variant: Words that make questions may not be questions at all.

Question

“Ibn al-Haytham was the first person ever to set down the rules of science. -S01E05”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)

Science , Personality

“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. (From the first Cosmos: ASO episode, Standing Up in the Milky Way.)”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)

Way , Star , Communication , Teachers

“You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

WNYC Radio Podcast, RadioLab, "Gravitational Anarchy" November 29, 2010, Minute 16:33.
2010s

Cats , Dead

“If you ask adults how many teachers — out of the scores in elementary, middle school, high school, college and graduate school — made a singular impression on who and what they are, it's never more than three or four teachers. Everybody else is a distant second to this set.When we finally create a cloning machine, we should clone those teachers. Maybe that's 100 years from now, but that's at the top of my list. Until that happens, the educational system has not fully understood the causes and effects of achievement and success in life. There remains a culture that equates high grades with success in school and correlates success in school with success in life. That mentality is so deep within us that it may be inextricable from our behavior.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger (May 21, 2009)

Life , Education , School , Behavior

“During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore—in part because it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their "low contracted prejudices." And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment—until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

2000s

People , World , Knowledge , Universe

“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

From the first Cosmos: ASO episode, Standing Up in the Milky Way.
2010s, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)
Variant: 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.

Star , Communication , Teachers , Science

“Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out — and we have only just begun.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Greatest Story Ever Told, Natural History Magazine, March 1998, 2010-12-07 http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/1998/03/01/the-greatest-story-ever-told,
2000s

Star , Universe , Parting

“No matter who you are, engaging in the quest to discover where and how things began tends to induce emotional fervor—as if knowing the beginning bestows upon you some form of fellowship with, or perhaps governance over, all that comes later. So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

In the Beginning, Natural History Magazine, September 2003, 2010-12-07 http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2003/09/01/in-the-beginning,
2000s

Life , Universe