Quotes from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“In the beginning, there was physics.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“we live on a cosmic speck of dust, orbiting a mediocre star in the far suburbs of a common sort of galaxy, among a hundred billion galaxies in the universe.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. And therein lies a fascinating dichotomy. “The universe always was,” gets no respect as a legitimate answer to “What was around before the beginning?” But for many religious people, the answer, “God always was,” is the obvious and pleasing answer to “What was around before God?”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Some 14 billion years ago, at the beginning of time, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe fit within a pinhead.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Science’s skeptical core makes it a poor competitor for human hearts and minds, which recoil from its ongoing controversies and prefer the security of seemingly eternal truths. If the scientific approach were just one more interpretation of the cosmos, it would never have amounted to much; but science’s big-time success rests on the fact that it works. If you board an aircraft built according to science – with principles that have survived numerous attempts to prove them wrong – you have a far better chance of reaching your destination than you do in an aircraft constructed by the rules of Vedic astrology.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Throughout history, different cultures have produced creation myths that explain our origins as the result of cosmic forces shaping our destiny. These histories have helped us to ward off feelings of insignificance.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body’s atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say that the universe has empowered us, here in our small corner of the cosmos, to figure itself out. And we have only just begun.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“After 7 or 8 billion years of such enrichment, an undistinguished star (the Sun) was born in an undistinguished region (the Orion arm) of an undistinguished galaxy (the Milky Way) in an undistinguished part of the universe (the outskirts of the Virgo supercluster). The gas cloud from which the Sun formed contained a sufficient supply of heavy elements to spawn a few planets, thousands of asteroids, and billions of comets.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“However, every advance in our knowledge of the cosmos has revealed that we live on a cosmic speck of dust, orbiting a mediocre star in the far suburbs of a common sort of galaxy, among a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. The news of our cosmic unimportance triggers impressive defense mechanisms in the human psyche.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“(1) the number of stars in the Milky Way that survive sufficiently long for intelligent life to evolve on planets around them; (2) the average number of planets around each of these stars; (3) the fraction of these planets with conditions suitable for life; (4) the probability that life actually arises on these suitable planets; and (5) the chance that life on such a planet evolves to produce an intelligent civilization, by which astronomers typically mean a form of life capable of communicating with ourselves.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Throughout history, different cultures have produced creation myths that explain our origins as the result of cosmic forces shaping our destiny. These histories have helped us to ward off feelings of insignificance. Although origin stories typically begin with the big picture, they get down to Earth with impressive speed, zipping past the creation of the universe, of all its contents, and of life on Earth, to arrive at long explanations of myriad details of human history and its social conflicts, as if we somehow formed the center of creation.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“As Einstein once wrote (more ringingly in German than in this English translation by one of us [DG]) to honor Isaac Newton: Look unto the stars to teach us How the master’s thoughts can reach us Each one follows Newton’s math Silently along its path.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“That is, cosmic dark matter enjoys about six times the mass of all the visible matter.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Astrobiologists now believe that the existence of life throughout the universe requires: 1. a source of energy; 2. a type of atom that allows complex structures to exist; 3. a liquid solvent in which molecules can float and interact; and 4. sufficient time for life to arise and to evolve.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Science depends on organized skepticism, that is, on continual, methodical doubting. Few of us doubt our own conclusions, so science embraces its skeptical approach by rewarding those who doubt someone else’s.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Si la velocidad orbital de la Tierra fuera mayor que la raíz cuadrada del doble de su velocidad actual, nuestro planeta alcanzaría una «velocidad de escape» y, como cabe suponer, escaparía del sistema solar. Podemos”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“... and I submit to you, that science, scientific discovery, especially cosmic discovery, does not become mainstream until the artist embraces the fruits of those discoveries.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Our planet Earth has a diameter of 0.04 light-seconds. Neptune’s orbit spans 8 light-hours. The stars of the Milky Way galaxy delineate a broad, flat disk about 100,000 light-years across. And the Virgo supercluster of galaxies, to which the Milky Way belongs, extends some 60 million light-years.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“If you board an aircraft built according to science—with principles that have survived numerous attempts to prove them wrong—you have a far better chance of reaching your destination than you do in an aircraft constructed by the rules of Vedic astrology.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Al principio, era la física. La”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“la materia le dice al espacio cómo curvarse, y el espacio le dice a la materia cómo moverse.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“To other scientists, the scientist who corrects a colleague’s error, or cites good reasons for seriously doubting his or her conclusions, performs a noble deed, like a Zen master who boxes the ears of a novice straying from the meditative path, although scientists correct one another more as equals than as master and student.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Las personas que creen que lo saben todo nunca han buscado ni se han encontrado con los lindes entre lo conocido y lo desconocido en el cosmos. Y”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“It took the mind of Albert Einstein, the twentieth century’s most brilliant and influential, to show that we can more accurately describe gravity’s action-at-a-distance as a warp in the fabric of space-time, produced by any combination of matter and energy.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“Although we have no guarantee that the Copernican principle can guide us correctly in all scientific investigations, it provides a useful counterweight to our natural tendency to think of ourselves as special. Even more significant is that the principle has an excellent track record so far, leaving us humbled at every turn: Earth does not occupy the center of the solar system, nor does the solar system occupy the center of the Milky Way galaxy, nor the Milky Way galaxy the center of the universe. And in case you believe that the edge is a special place, we are not at the edge of anything, either.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“discovery of enormous masses of organisms at depths a mile or more beneath the basalts of Washington State, living mainly on geothermal heat, suggests that we may someday find the Europan oceans alive with organisms unlike any on Earth. But one pressing question remains: Would we call the creatures Europans or Europeans? Mars”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say that the universe has empowered us, here in our small corner of the cosmos, to figure itself out. And we have only just begun.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, quote from Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

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