If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of continual engagement with knowledge and culture beyond specific commemorative months.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson's quote reflects his disappointment if he is only remembered during Black History Month, suggesting that true education and recognition of historical figures should not be confined to a single time period. This statement challenges educators to engage their audiences year-round and emphasizes the ongoing relevance of African American contributions to science and education.
In practice
This quote can be shared during educational seminars to encourage continuous learning about diversity.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
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.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests.
If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.
Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.
If you wish to learn swimming you have to go into the water and if you wish to become a problem solver you have to solve problems.
The outside world told black kids when I was growing up that we weren't worth anything. But our parents said it wasn't so, and our churches and our schoolteachers said it wasn't so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves.
To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.