Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

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

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism.

Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool.

Science is a method, not a religion, yet it can be just as close-minded. Open minds here Claire. Always open minds. Question everything, accept nothing as fact until you prove it for yourself.

Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.

This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore.

Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else's position.

The most successful scientists in the history of the world are those who posed the right questions

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

The most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur.

Doubt is clearly a value in science. It is important to doubt and that the doubt is not a fearful thing, but a thing of great value.

Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.

My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

Leonardo da Vinci did not take received wisdom - whether from ancient classical thinkers or medieval scholars or from the Bible - without questioning it. And this was the beginning of the scientific method. This is another lesson for our time: that when we have evidence that contradicts a certain belief, we should be willing to change it. I think this made Leonardo, in some ways, a person who better understood the beauty of God's creation than a person who just takes all received wisdom from the Bible on faith.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

The alternative to doubt is authority, against which science had fought for centuries.

Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument.

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

Be Skeptical, but learn to listen.

If one has curiosity, then one stands the chance of attain a high level of scientific inquiry.