Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

If we do find ET, we will at least have something in common with them. They may live on planet Zog and have seven tentacles, but they will be made of the same kinds of atoms as us. If they have eyes, they will gaze out on the same cosmos as we do. They will, like us, trace their origins back to a 'Big Bang' 13.8 billion years ago.

'Who are we?' And to me that's the essential question that's always been in science fiction. A lot of science fiction stories are - at their very best - evocations of that question. When we look up at the night sky and wonder, 'Is there anyone else out there?' we're also asking who we are we in relation to them.

Life can be less mysterious than we make it out to be when we try to think about how it would be on other planets. And if we remove the mystery of life, then I think it is a little bit easier for us to think about how we live, and how perhaps we're not as special as we always think we are.

While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me.

It's extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, 'tell us about us', 'tell us about the first human being'. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

You will never find scientists leading armies into battle. You just won't. Especially not astrophysicists - we see the biggest picture there is. We understand how small we are in the cosmos. We understand how fragile and temporary our existence is here on Earth.

The causes of war are the same as the causes of competition among individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride; the desire for food, land, materials, fuels, mastery. The state has our instincts without our restraints.

To me, there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form - and local human passions and conditions and standards - are depicted as native to other worlds and universes.

If there's anyone in space, what they'll learn about the human race will be listening to us talking on the car phone.

Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.

Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits.

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human"?

You get out there in space and say to yourself: that's home. That's the only home we have, and the only one we're going to have for a long time

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.

What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding we are a little lonely, and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet, the Earth.... In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

The universe has fascinated mankind for many, many years, dating back to the very earliest episodes of Star Trek, when the brave crew of the Enterprise set out, wearing pajamas, to explore the boundless voids of space, which turned out to be as densely populated as Queens, New York. Virtually every planet they found was inhabited, usually by evil beings with cheap costumes and Russian accents, so finally the brave crew of the Enterprise returned to Earth to gain weight and make movies.

Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy.

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.

Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

Energy is the key to prosperity, to security. And until we [in US] start tapping our domestic, conventional and alternative sources to energy, we're never going to get there.