Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
EconomicsFutureInnovationPrivate SectorSpace Exploration The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not.
CommunicationCreativityExpressionSocial MediaTechnology For me, the most fascinating interface is Twitter. I have odd cosmic thoughts every day and I realized I could hold them to myself or share them with people who might be interested.
Critical ThinkingInformation EvaluationKnowledgeScience literacy Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you.
ApplicationDiscoveryProgressScienceUncertainty As history has shown, pure science research ultimately ends up applying to something. We just don't know it at the time.
CollaborationCommunicationInterdisciplinary Scientists in different disciplines don't speak the same language. They publish in different journals. It's like the United Nations: You come together, but no one speaks the same language, so you need some translators.
AltruismContributionPurposeSatisfactionSociety I get enormous satisfaction from knowing I'm doing something for society.
EnergySpace ExplorationUnlimited Resources There are a lot of things you can do in space, and space essentially is unlimited resources. We are climbing over ourselves here looking for the next source of energy. The universe has an unlimited source of energy.
InsightKnowledgePredictionScriptureTesting There is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying, 'I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet, because this gave me insight. Let's go test that prediction,' and have the prediction be correct.
EducationLearningPassionProcessTechnique One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
ExplorationInnovationPowerProgressScience Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.
Cautionary TaleCrisis PreventionEnvironmental ChangePlanetary Science Mars once was wet and fertile. It's now bone dry. Something bad happened on Mars. I want to know what happened on Mars so that we may prevent it from happening here on Earth.
Environmental IssuesGlobal AwarenessHuman BehaviorTechnology and Society I said that if an alien came to visit, I'd be embarrassed to tell them that we fight wars to pull fossil fuels out of the ground to run our transportation. They'd be like, 'What?'
ConsensusDecision MakingDemocracyEfficiencyGovernance When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there's nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.
ExplorationMotivationNational IdentityThreatWar We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat.
AwarenessEducationEqualityIdentityRepresentation If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist.
ChangeConnectionGrowthIdentity I was born the same week NASA was founded, so we're the same age and feel some of the same pains, joys, and frustrations.
IndependenceLearningMotivationPersonal GrowthSelf-education There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.
Religion and Science Most religious people in America fully embrace science. So the argument that religion has some issue with science applies to a small fraction of those who declare that they are religious. They just happen to be a very vocal fraction, so you got the impression that there are more of them than there actually is.
BenevolenceCourageExistenceFaithPerception Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.
CreativityHumilityIdentityIntelligenceSelf-Perception We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'
HistoryInnovationProgressSociety For most of human civilization, the pace of innovation has been so slow that a generation might pass before a discovery would influence your life, culture or the conduct of nations.
Cultural InfluenceHistorical ContextNational IdentityPerception of SpaceScience and Discovery All Plutophiles are based in America. If you go to other countries, they have much less of an attachment to either the existence or preservation of Pluto as a planet. Once you investigate that, you find out that Disney's dog Pluto was sketched the same year the cosmic object was discovered. And Pluto was discovered by an American.
EconomicsGovernment RoleLeadershipRisk ManagementSpace Exploration If you're going to lead a space frontier, it has to be government; it'll never be private enterprise. Because the space frontier is dangerous, and it's expensive, and it has unquantified risks. And under those conditions, you cannot establish a capital-market evaluation of that enterprise. You can't get investors.
IndividualismInnovationResilienceScienceSystem Critique People who are scientists today are scientists in spite of the system, typically, not because of it.
CreativityDedicationPatiencePerseverance People generally don't recognize how long it takes to conceive, publish, and write a book.
AutonomyEducationEmpowermentLeadershipPersonal Growth I always try to get people a different outlook. When you do that, people take ownership of the information. They don't ever have to reference me because, I'd like to believe as an educator, I'm empowering them to have those thoughts themselves.