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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the perspective that humans may not be the dominant beings we think we are, as we coexist with countless bacteria that play vital roles in our lives.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote challenges the anthropocentric view that humans are the pinnacle of intelligence and dominance over the planet. By illustrating the vast population of bacteria in our bodies, Tyson encourages us to reconsider our place in the ecosystem and recognize that our existence is deeply intertwined with other life forms, shaping our understanding of intelligence and control as a matter of perspective.
In practice
In a discussion about environmental impacts, one might quote Tyson to highlight our interconnectedness with other life forms.
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.
Let me tell you something about full moons: kids don't care about full moons. They'll play in a full moon, no worries at all. They only get scared of magic or werewolves from stupid adults and their stupid adult stories.
Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
The past is always - one moment it's what happened three minutes ago, and one minute it's what happened 30 years ago. And they flow into each other in ways that we can't predict and that we keep discovering in dreams, which keep bringing up feelings and moments, some of which we never actually saw.
The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.
Everywhere you look for comparisons of life under anarchy and life under government, life under government is less violent.
It doesn’t matter how old I get, but as long as I continue to live I’ll always discover something new about myself.
Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each.
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