“I object to religion in science classrooms not because it’s religion but because it’s not science.”

I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

The day that you stop looking – because you’re content God did it – I don’t need you in the lab. You’re useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.

As areas of knowledge grow, so too do the perimeters of ignorance.

Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what’s really there.

Somehow 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.

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

Claiming 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.

We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others. It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots.

We 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.

I don’t want people to say, ‘Something is true because Tyson says it is true.’ That’s not critical thinking.

Facts are true whether or not you believe them.

Why 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?

The molecules that comprise our body are traceable to the crucibles of the centers of stars.These atoms and molecules are in us because, in fact, the universe is in us. And, we are not only figuratively, but literally, stardust.

What are the lessons to be learned from this journey of the mind through the universe? That humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos. Have a nice day.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

The privileged classes today are bothered about petrol and diesel prices while the poor can’t afford two meals a day. I am a very small person, but I want us to think beyond personal and regional interests.

I love teaching. I love coaching. I love teaching communications class. I love giving back to the kids and the industry.

My classmates would copulate with anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.

It takes a certain amount of guts to go to your class reunions.

Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

I tell the boy in my class that no means no and he laughs in my face – says no means change my mind.