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.
Interpretation
The quote explores the origins of a fundamental question about existence and evolution.
Neil Degrasse Tyson uses the chicken-and-egg dilemma to illustrate concepts of evolutionary biology and the nature of species. By stating that the egg came first, laid by a bird that was not quite a chicken, he emphasizes the gradual process of evolution, suggesting that definitions of species are not always clear-cut and that change occurs over time.
In practice
This quote can be used in a biology class when discussing evolution and species.
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.
Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries β not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.
'Death with dignity' is our society's expression of the universal yearning to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings. But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms.
he wanted people to like his mind again-after awhile it might be such a nice place in which to live.
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.
The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It's not an argument that it's reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.