The day that you stop looking - because you're content God did it - I don't need you in the lab. You're useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.
Interpretation
Complacency hinders progress and understanding; one must remain curious and engaged.
In this quote, Neil DeGrasse Tyson emphasizes the importance of curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. He suggests that once a person becomes complacent and ceases to question or seek understanding, they no longer contribute meaningfully to scientific exploration and discovery. Curiosity fuels learning and innovation, while contentment with the status quo can lead to stagnation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation about scientific research to inspire students.
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.
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
I think the appropriate response for a physicist is: 'I do not find the concept of God very interesting, because I cannot test it.'
I'm in favor of changing the destination of humans. There are a lot of manned missions that can be done, but not in the direction of the moon.
Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number - there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method.
All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.
Perhaps arising from a fascination with animals, biology seemed the most interesting of sciences to me as a child.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.