He is an American astrophysicist, a science communicator and director of the Hayden Planetarium. He was educated in the public schools through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science and earned his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. Tyson’s professional research interests are broad, but include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson obtains his data from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and in the Andes Mountains of Chile.
He is the recipient of twelve honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest award given by NASA to a non-government citizen, has written a number of popular books on astronomy. His research has focused on observations in stellar formation and evolution as well as cosmology and galactic astronomy.
(1958 –
– Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes –
We are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
The most I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there’s any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you heard this?
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
When Ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
When your reasons for believing something are justified ad hoc, you are left susceptible to further discoveries undermining the rationale for that belief.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
The most accessible field in science, from the point of view of language, is astrophysics.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
To the unaided eye the brightest stars are more than a hundred times brighter than the dimmest. So the dim ones are obviously a hundred times farther away from Earth, aren’t they?
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
If most of the stars we see are highly luminous, then surely those stars are common throughout the galaxy.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Most of the stars you see in the night sky are of the highly luminous variety, and they lie extraordinarily far away.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it’s worked quite well so far
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
So the brightest stars are not necessarily the ones closest to Earth.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Today secular philosophers call that kind of divine invocation “God of the gaps”—which comes in handy, because there has never been a shortage of gaps in people’s knowledge.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
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
There’s no tradition of scientists knocking down the Sunday school door, telling the preacher, “That might not necessarily be true.” That’s never happened. There’re no scientists picketing outside of churches.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
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
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
Great scientific minds, from Claudius Ptolemy of the second century to Isaac Newton of the seventeenth, invested their formidable intellects in attempts to deduce the nature of the universe from the statements and philosophies contained in religious writings…. Had any of these efforts worked, science and religion today might be one and the same. But they are not.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
My only hope is that every other [alien] civilization isn’t doing exactly what we are doing because then everybody would be listening, nobody would be receiving, and we would collectively conclude that there is no other intelligent life in the universe.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Another practice that isn’t science is embracing ignorance. Yet it’s fundamental to the philosophy of intelligent design: I don’t know what this is…. So it must be the product of a higher intelligence.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysics is not the first subject you think of to put food on somebody’s plate or to somehow improve the situation of the underprivileged in the world.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
A review of history’s ambitious projects… demonstrates that only three drivers have been sufficient to create them: defense… the promise of economic return… and the praise of power….
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Cosmic dreams and the innate human desire to explore the frontier are just not as effective at dislodging $100 billion to go to the Moon as a cold war enemy and the mandate of a beloved, assassinated president.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
