Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

What intrigues basic scientists like me is that anytime we do a series of experiments, there are going to be three or four new questions that come up when you think you've answered one.

The love of experiment was very strong in him [Charles Darwin], and I can remember the way he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt experimental work to be a rest or holiday.

I learned quickly, as I tell my graduate students now, there are no answers in the back of the book when the equipment doesn't work or the measurements look strange.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

I had learned that science is a rewarding, active process of discovery, not the passive absorption of what others had discovered.

Science by itself is about numbers, and it's about measuring things. It's very important but it's very dry.

I love to watch how scientists' minds work.

I love to be a scientist. I've always enjoyed being curious.

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

I like solving problems, and science provides a logical way of solving real-life problems.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Scientists are always skeptics.

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

One of the biggest and most important tools of theoretical physics is the wastebasket.

Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discovery.

Science is about applying what we know and asking what we don't know.

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

It is crucial for scientists to be willing to be wrong; otherwise, you might not do the most important experiments, or you may ignore your most important findings.

I was going to be a scientist.

Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.

With science, there is this culture of experimentation, and most of the time, those experiments fail.

When all is said and done, science actually takes hard work and a willingness to sometimes find out that your most cherished hypothesis is wrong.