I don't ever tell people what to do! Even if it seems and feels that way sometimes, I don't think I should tell a person how to spend their money. I try not to tell people what to read. Neil deGrasse Tyson More Quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson More Quotes From Neil deGrasse Tyson If your belief system is not founded in an objective reality, you should not be making decisions that affect other people. Neil deGrasse Tyson decision reality people Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes.... The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms. Neil deGrasse Tyson bad-ass atheist writing Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure. Neil deGrasse Tyson ignorance humanity knowledge Imagination alone is not enough, because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine Neil deGrasse Tyson cosmos imagination reality 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. Neil deGrasse Tyson teaching children years Does it mean, if you don't understand something, and the community of physicists don't understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here's a list of things in the past that the physicists at the time didn't understand [and now we do understand] [...]. If that's how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that's how you want to come at the problem Neil deGrasse Tyson ignorance mean moving Aliens might be surprised to learn that in a cosmos with limitless starlight, humans kill for energy sources buried in the sand Neil deGrasse Tyson cosmos energy might 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 math doors mean 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 sun long He invited people to sign a petition that demanded either strict control of, or a total ban on, dihydrogen monoxide.... Yes, 86 percent of the passersby voted to ban water (H2O) from the environment. Maybe that's what really happened to all the water on Mars. Neil deGrasse Tyson water science people Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance. Neil deGrasse Tyson vaccines ignorance world Everyone should have their mind blown once a day. Neil deGrasse Tyson should should-have mind So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.' Neil deGrasse Tyson empathy reading writing Apart from the obvious advantages of having ice to melt, filter, then drink, you can also break apart the water's hydrogen from its oxygen. Use the hydrogen and some of the oxygen as active ingredients in rocket fuel and keep the rest of the oxygen for breathing. And in your spare time between space missions, you can always go ice skating on the frozen lake created with the extracted water. Neil deGrasse Tyson breathing oxygen ice You say you're worried about kids? I'm not worried about kids, I'm worried about grown ups... Children are not the problem here... We spend the first year of their lives teaching them how to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down. Neil deGrasse Tyson teaching kids children Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not. Neil deGrasse Tyson success inspiring motivational Facts are true whether or not you believe them. Neil deGrasse Tyson believe facts religion Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what's really there. Neil deGrasse Tyson pretending findings doors UV is bad for molecules because its high energy breaks the bonds between a molecule's constituent atoms. That's why UV is bad for you, too: it's always best to avoid things that decompose the molecules of your flesh. Neil deGrasse Tyson molecules energy science We should not be ashamed of not having answers to all questions yet... I'm perfectly happy staring somebody in the face saying, 'I don't know yet, and we've got top people working on it.' The moment you feel compelled to provide an answer, then you're doing the same thing that the religious community does: providing answers to every possible question. Neil deGrasse Tyson religious science people
