Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

I've known from long ago that the universe was calling me. If you were one of those annoying adults that said, 'Oh, what are you gonna be when you grow up?' I would say, 'Astrophysicist.' And then they'd walk away real quickly.

When I was in my teens, Yehudi Menuhin, who was at work on his project 'The Music of Man,' introduced me to the great astronomer Carl Sagan. It was Sagan who first opened my eyes to the magnitude of the universe, and essentially to the notion of 'music of the spheres.'

It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

I'm not a huge fan of the concept of 'passion' when it comes to careers. Instead of trying to answer the daunting question of, 'What's your passion?' it's better simply to watch what you do when you've got time of your own and nobody's looking.

When a kid says 'I'm in astrophysics at school because of your character' that's amazing to me.

When I was in high school, I was in a special math class. I was infatuated with physics, particularly nuclear physics, Einstein, and the Big Bang. I read a lot about black holes. And partly because I'm so lazy I thought you could do all this just by looking at the sky and thinking up universes. It didn't seem like hard work when I was a kid, so I enrolled in this class.

I used to rap as a kid and people were impressed by it, so it gave me the drive to keep going. Everybody has at least one talent. I guess this is my talent.

The universe is so amazing and so limitless, who wouldn't want to study the universe?

Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They couldn't have cared less! There aren't even any Corinthians left, but Paul's letters persist. Paul was not a professional writer. He was called to something, and he sent his letters. That's a good way to look at it. That you might be making something that nobody cares about, but you have to do it. It's not that people should care, but that you should care.

A friend tweeted me with 'The Big Freeze.' I don't know about that one. I've got to go home, play around with the kids and figure something out. I'll have one.

If you can't figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose.

As a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. And my own passion was that I wanted to be a film director. I realized that being an astronaut was not going to be an option, so I said, "Well, I'm going to be a director and do films in space."

It turns out that the history of astrophysics is where we perfected time keeping.

When you're a kid going on being an adult, everything radiates so deeply and resonates so passionately, and I like the opportunity to tell those stories.

Work for Swaraj fails to appeal to us because we have no music in us.

I am sitting here 93 million miles from the sun on a rounded rock which is spinning at the rate of 1000 miles an hour... and my head pointing down into space with nothing between me and infinity but something called gravity which I can't even understand, and which you can't even buy any place so as to have some stored away for a gravityless day.

We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid 'blossom' into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it's not the children who change but their environments. As adults they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don't have to live in whatever culture they'er plunked into.

Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success

While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me. To fall into a black hole, that is more amazing than anything I've ever read in a science-fiction story.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I was acting in all the school plays. I went to school for acting. I was really sure that that's what I wanted to do.

There will be certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled.

Sometimes my kids might tell me they had a dream or and maybe I'll paint some paintings from their dream. That's one good thing you get from your kids. Rob them of their dreams.

What can be more soul shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100-million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone tool in one's hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientist who gazed upon the face of the universe's creation and did not blink?

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.

A high-school girl, seated next to a famous astronomer at a dinner party, struck up a conversation with him by asking: "What do you do for a living?" "I study astronomy," he replied. "Really? said the teenager, wide-eyed. "I finished astronomy last year."