Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.

I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

The autobiographical self is built on the basis of past memories and memories of the plans that we have made; it's the lived past and the anticipated future.

Who you are, where you've been and what you've done is all up here, captured and preserved in your memories. If you lost that - the story of your own origins - you'd lose your identity, your sense of self.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

A person's memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It's you.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

How will we know it’s us without our past?

Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

The word 'self' is as great a mystery as the word 'other'. It's just a polarity between two mysteries.

That I am not my experiences is very obvious. I am the one who is having those experiences. Spirituality has nothing to do with experience.

Most people have a time-bound awareness. And the reason is they have sacrificed their self for their self-image.

Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we decide who we are.

I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves?

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

One forgets that one is one. I must try to remember this.

I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.

Life is consciousness.

I've been a foreigner for the past twenty years. I don't have roots anymore. My roots are in my memory and my writing. That's why memory is so important. Who are you but what you can remember?

Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities. That is really why I am committing an autobiography.

I am me, whatever that means. I am conscious.