Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. He has become one of the world’s most well-known scientific minds with his thought-provoking insights into space exploration, technology, and life in general.
Like Carl Sagan and other bing minds of the modern time, Degrasse has prolifically contributed to the advancement of human knowledge and the enlightenment of our minds. His books, podcasts, and interviews are full of witty quips and nuggets of wisdom that are worth preserving for future generations.
In this post, which is part of a series entitled quotes from books, I share with you some inspiring quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson that will make you pause for reflection on our place in the universe. Whether it’s to remind us of how far we have come or how much farther we still need to go as a species, these words of wisdom offer a unique perspective on humanity’s relationship with nature, knowledge and each other.
1. “There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.”
2. “I never want you to quote me citing my authority as a scientist for your knowing something. If that’s what you have to resort to I have failed as an educator.”
3. “As an educator, it’s my duty to empower you to think. So that you can go forth and think accurate thoughts about how the world is put together.”
4. “It’s the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That’s what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.”
5. “Knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.”
6. “Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow.”
7. “During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore — in part because it’s fun to do. But there’s a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us.”
8. “Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow.”
9. “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
10. “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”
11. “I don’t want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don’t understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don’t understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.”
12. “If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.”
13. “I am trying to convince people — not only the public, but lawmakers and people in power — that investing in the frontier of science, however remote it may seem in its relevance to what you’re doing today, is a way of stockpiling the seed corns of future harvests of this nation.”
14. “We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.”
15. “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.”
16. “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
17. “The more 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.”
18. “I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime”
19. “I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.”
20. “Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.”
21. “Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do.”
22. “Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it?… 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.”
23. “I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.”
24. “Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature.”
25.”Perhaps we’ve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there’s no sign of intelligent life.”
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