Neil deGrasse
Neil deGrasse
children kids curiosity
Kids are born curious about the world. What adults primarily do in the presence of kids is unwittingly thwart the curiosity of children.
impossible workplace problem
How many times have you heard a person in a workplace say, "I wasn't trained for this!" That's an impossible reaction from a physicist, who would say, instead, "Cool. A problem I've never seen before. Let's see how I can figure out how to solve it!".
space intellectual watches
I don't want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don't understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don't understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.
world blind natural
When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.
optimistic bad-ass thinking
I'm optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren't still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you're in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so
understanding i-dont-need-you useless
The day that you stop looking - because you're content God did it - I don't need you in the lab. You're useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.
artist people secret
There are street artists. Street musicians. Street actors. But there are no street physicists. A little known secret is that a physicist is one of the most employable people in the marketplace - a physicist is a trained problem solver.
empowering understanding looks
If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you.
children teaching kids
You say you're worried about kids? I'm not worried about kids, I'm worried about grown ups... Children are not the problem here... We spend the first year of their lives teaching them how to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.
stars
Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.
stars night thinking
That the north star is the brightest in the night sky. I'd guess about 9 out of 10 people think this. But it does not require a grant from the National Science Foundation to learn the answer. The North Star is not even in the top 40 in the night sky. It's the 49th brightest star. Rather dull and boring by most measures.
stars dust way
We are star dust in the highest exalted way, called by the universe, reaching out to the universe
ignorance discovery imagination
Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination
stars night sky
I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.