Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.
Interpretation
Ignorance spreads like a virus, and it is only through reasoning that we can combat it.
In this quote, Neil Degrasse Tyson emphasizes the dangers of ignorance and equates it to a virus that can infect society. He urges that the only way to counteract this spread is through reason and knowledge, implying that it is a collective responsibility to promote understanding and critical thinking for the betterment of humanity.
In practice
This quote can be used in educational speeches to motivate students to pursue knowledge.
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.
In fact, looking back, it seems to me that I was clueless until I was about 50-years-old.
In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.
What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not. That's a big contrast to actually uncovering the whisper, realizing that it's a passing memory, and moving closer to all those fears and all those edgy feelings that maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine. It's not just one way. We are walking, talking paradoxes.
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