Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Pacific is the best toilet for satellites.

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'

Being at the top of your game intellectually, philosophically, politically, is not a forever thing.

I'm often asked - and occasionally in an accusatory way - 'Are you atheist?' And it's like, 'You know, the only 'ist' I am is a scientist, all right?' I don't associate with movements. I'm not an 'ism.' I just - I think for myself.

I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.

If a scientist is not befuddled by what they're looking at, then they're not a research scientist.

Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.

There's something about witnessing something in the sky that makes people think they're seeing something unique or special. I don't really understand the psychology of it, to be honest.

I'm baffled all the time. We don't know what's driving 96% of the universe. Everybody you know and love and heard of and think about and see in the night sky through a telescope: four percent of the universe.

One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.

What you need, above all else, is a love for your subject, whatever it is. You've got to be so deeply in love with your subject that when curve balls are thrown, when hurdles are put in place, you've got the energy to overcome them.

Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.