Never presume that just because you disagree with an idea that you must be correct. Neil deGrasse Tyson More Quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson More Quotes From Neil deGrasse Tyson If an alien lands on your front lawn and extends an appendage as a gesture of greeting, before you get friendly, toss it an eightball. If the appendage explodes, then the alien was probably made of antimatter. If not, then you can proceed to take it to your leader. Neil deGrasse Tyson bad-asslandleader Any time scientists disagree, it's because we have insufficient data. Then we can agree on what kind of data to get; we get the data; and the data solves the problem. Either I'm right, or you're right, or we're both wrong. And we move on. That kind of conflict resolution does not exist in politics or religion. Neil deGrasse Tyson datadoemoving This fear factor, this war driver is a very strong one and it's been with the species ever since the beginning and it motivated the Great Wall of China. War can be aggressive or defensive, right? So it motivated the Great Wall of China. Our space program was reactive to Russia. Neil deGrasse Tyson wallstrongwar 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 bangscharacterworld If Mars formed life, then life on Earth could have been seeded by life on Mars, making every life form on Earth descended from Martians. Neil deGrasse Tyson marsformearth Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That's a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing. Neil deGrasse Tyson explorationstuffkids Some claim evolution is just a theory. As if it were merely an opinion. The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on Earth is not only solid science. In my view, it’s also a soaring spiritual experience. Neil deGrasse Tyson theory-of-evolutionspiritualviews If Pizza sizes were given in area not diameter, you'd see instantly that a 7 inch is less than half the size of a 10 inch pie Neil deGrasse Tyson sizepiehalf As areas of knowledge grow, so too do the perimeters of ignorance. Neil deGrasse Tyson perimetergrowsignorance You 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 Tyson officemeanpeople For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains. Neil deGrasse Tyson centurytakenbrain If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument. Neil deGrasse Tyson jobsbelievepeople UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public. In fact, they're lower. You say, why is that so? Well, because we know what the hell we're looking at! Neil deGrasse Tyson flyingfactsreligion I don't even think much about politicians. I think about the people in the audience who applaud the politicians. They are your fellow countrymen and they're the ones you live with - that should be who we target for education and enlightenment. Neil deGrasse Tyson enlightenmentpeoplethinking The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don't expect. Neil deGrasse Tyson discovery We live in the kind of society where, in almost all cases, hard work is rewarded. Neil deGrasse Tyson caseshard-workkind It is astonishing to realize that until Galileo performed his experiments on the acceleration of gravity in the early seventeenth century, nobody questioned Aristotle's falling balls. Nobody said, Show Me! Neil deGrasse Tyson ballssciencefall The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves. Neil deGrasse Tyson versionspeople Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem. Neil deGrasse Tyson smartignorancephilosophy If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature. Neil deGrasse Tyson religiouslossscience
