Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Never confuse wishes with facts.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

Evolution is not something you can believe in or not believe in like do you believe in gravity.

So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.

Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?

Just because you believe it doesn't make it so.

For scientists, reality is not optional.

I care what is actually true, even more than what I hope is true.

The worst derangement of the spirit is to believe things because we want them to be so, not because we have seen them for what they are.

Perception is reality, but it may not be actuality, and you have got to be able to keep the difference between that.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.

A piece of advice I would give to young actors - hang on to your family, and hang on to your reality - and hang on to your "real". Because you're going into the land of make believe.

Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions.

The Earth is not 6,000 or 10,000 years old. It's not. And if that conflicts with your beliefs, I strongly feel you should question your beliefs.

Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate is how you think about information that's presented in front of you. I think that's the great challenge. You have people who believe they do know how to think about the information, but don't, and they're in the position of power and legislation. You can't base a society on non-objectively verifiable truth. Otherwise, it's a fantasy land and science is the pathway to those emerging truths that are hard-earned and that some have taken decades, if not centuries, to emerge from experiments all around the world.

Repeat, over and over again, in case anyone forgets it or believes the contrary, that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

You can try to control people, or you can try to have a system that represents reality. I find that knowing what's really happening is more important than trying to control people.

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.

To recognize that some of the things our culture believes are not true imposes on us the duty of finding out which are true and which are not.

In a social media age, it seems that everyone lives in their own reality and that when you give consideration to Newt Gingrich, he exists in an alternate reality, at some level, where the things he says are so diametrically opposed to the record.