1,151 Quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

George Bush, within a week of this [the 9/11 attacks], in a speech, attempting to distinguish US from the Muslim fundamentalists, said Our God is the God who named the stars. The problem is: two-thirds of all stars that have names, have Arabic names. I don't think he knew this. That would confound the point that he was making.

Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That's a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing.

What do you call those knobby things on doors that help you open them?

Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.

If you find life on Europa [Jupiter's moon], like, what would you call it? Would it be, like, Europeans?

Everything we do, every thought we've ever had, is produced by the human brain. But exactly how it operates remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries, and it seems the more we probe its secrets, the more surprises we find.

The most successful scientists in the history of the world are those who posed the right questions

Italy valued cathedrals while Spain valued explorers. So worldwide, five times as many people speak Spanish than Italian.

If an alien lands on your front lawn and extends an appendage as a gesture of greeting, before you get friendly, toss it an eightball. If the appendage explodes, then the alien was probably made of antimatter. If not, then you can proceed to take it to your leader.