Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

It's not a meritocracy until everyone starts with the same opportunities, is it?

That's what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it's fair, because people would be the best if they weren't discriminated against.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

In our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system advanced beyond all the world.

If the spirit of equality means anything, it means like opportunity, and if we once lose like opportunity, we lose the only chance we have toward equality throughout the nation.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

In the long run it is more important to us as a nation to show the world that we believe in equality of opportunity, that we realize that any kind of segregation is discrimination whether it comes about because of race, color, or creed, and that we are determined to show the world that we believe in the things we preach.

You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval of affirmative action.… We have to prove ourselves and we have to work hard doing it.

We are building a country where a person's prospects are determined by their own initiative and hard work and not by the color of their skin, place of birth, gender, language, or income of their parents.

I feel passionately that the opportunities I have had should be available to everyone.

Win on your merit, not your skin color.

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

We need every human gift and cannot afford to neglect any gift because of artificial barriers of sex or race or class or national origin.

Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life.

We live in a moment when the dream of equal opportunity is within reach.

I don't like to be pigeonholed; I don't like when people won't see me for something because they don't think I can do it. I always feel like, at least give me the shot.

What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.

If we try to engineer outcomes, if we overturn tradition to make everyone the same, we ruin society. If we upset tradition to allow for an equal shot at the starting gate, everyone wins, except for the charlatans and would be dictators.

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.

Everybody has equal opportunity, and I think that is true for everything.

I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form.

Society as a whole benefits immeasurably from a climate in which all persons, regardless of race or gender, may have the opportunity to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and remuneration based on ability.

Education for all seems to be the product of a type of distributive justice that is in no way related to the individual.

Equality means nothing unless incorporated into the institutions.