Knowledge of the natural world and how it works should be counted as fundamental to informed governance. You can’t have a functioning democracy, if the electorate is under-informed or, worse, mis-informed.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONKnowledge of the natural world and how it works should be counted as fundamental to informed governance. You can’t have a functioning democracy, if the electorate is under-informed or, worse, mis-informed.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONClaiming there is no other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming there are no whales in the ocean.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONI dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONWhy can’t we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What’s our excuse?
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONYou don’t want to raise a kid in a culture where the kid who asks the most questions is annoying. You want a culture where the kid who asks the most questions gets awards and gets another piece of cake.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONYou can’t have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That’s a recipe for disaster. And I don’t mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONOne thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONThe Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONIf you’re really successful at bullshitting, it means you’re not hanging around enough people smarter than you.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONThe greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONWe spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONSomehow it’s O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, ‘I never learned to read,’ they’d say I was an illiterate dolt.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONI know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONI think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONOur nation is turning into an idiocracy.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSONCuriously, light-loving green plants reject the Sun’s green light, reflecting it back at you, which is why they look green.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON