Neil Degrasse Tyson

I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God. I just don't - I don't have the energy for that, and so I... Agnostic separates me from the conduct of atheists whether or not there is strong overlap between the two categories, and at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all.

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?'

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.

It's quite literally true that we are star dust, in the highest exalted way one can use that phrase. ...I bask in the majesty of the cosmos. I use words, compose sentences that sound like the sentences I hear out of people that had revelation of Jesus, who go on their pilgrimages to Mecca.

Kids are born curious about the world. What adults primarily do in the presence of kids is unwittingly thwart the curiosity of children.

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.

In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemies. And when you're surrounded by carnivores, one of the best strategies is to fade into the background and disappear.

Like no other science, astrophysics cross-pollinate s the expertise of chemists, biologists, geologists and physicists, all to discover the past, present, and future of the cosmos-and our humble place within it.

Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.

For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.

The history of exploration across nations and across time is not one where nations said, 'Let's explore because it's fun.' It was, 'Let's explore so that we can claim lands for our country, so that we can open up new trade routes; let's explore so we can become more powerful.'

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.

If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.

I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people's politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.

Fortunately, there's another handy driver that has manifested itself throughout the history of cultures. The urge to want to gain wealth. That is almost as potent a driver as the urge to maintain your security. And that is how I view NASA going forward - as an investment in our economy.

One of the symptoms of an absence of innovation is the fact that you lose your jobs. Everyone else catches up with you. They can do what you do better than you or cheaper than you. And in a multinational corporate-free market enterprise, it is the company's obligation to take the factory to a place where they can make it more cheaply.

After your first job, is anyone asking you what your GPA was? No, they don't care. They ask you: Are you a good leader? Do people follow you? Do you have integrity? Are you innovative? Do you solve problems? Somebody's got to do that homework and redesign the educational system so that it can actually train people to be successful in life.

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.

Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive

Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.

Do you realize that the 850 billion dollar bank bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA. And so when someone says, 'We don't have enough money for this space probe.' No, it's not that you don't have enough money. It's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.