Neil deGrasse
Neil deGrasse
oldest people second study time
I study the universe. It's the second oldest profession. People have been looking up for a long time.
academic aerospace command labor lead means power quality spent time wield
I've spent quality time in the aerospace community, with my service on two presidential commissions, but at heart, I'm an academic. Being an academic means I don't wield power over person, place or thing. I don't command armies; I don't lead labor unions. All I have is the power of thought.
sequence solar system time viewed
The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.
across attempt invested time understanding
In all civilizations we've studied, all cultures that we know of across the Earth and across time have invested some kind of attempt to understanding where where, where they come from, and where they are going.
biggest book books built buy cents cost kid libraries recognize saw science spent tables time
My parents didn't know much science; in fact, they didn't know science at all. But they could recognize a science book when they saw it, and they spent a lot of time at bookstores, combing the remainder tables for science books to buy for me. I had one of the biggest libraries of any kid in school, built on books that cost 50 cents or a dollar.
books discovered half might people seeing stuff time
Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don't get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong.
applying ends history pure research science time ultimately
As history has shown, pure science research ultimately ends up applying to something. We just don't know it at the time.
best debate investment judge laws people physics pose seen served teaching time true versus whether
You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.
baffled driving everybody four heard love night percent time
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.
photography time-travel form
Photography is a form of time travel.
access artists canvas changed frontier generation paint sit sort talk team
Modern-day access has completely changed how we talk about and think about the frontier of the cosmos. This is a modern-day incarnation of what used to be a team of artists who would sit there with a canvas and sort of paint up something that was described to them, to be photographed and put in the sky. This is a new generation of the representation of the frontier of science.
bullet miss
It's a bullet that will just miss us.
clear generation goes
It's a collaboration that goes clear to Japan. It's a new generation of representations of the sky.
aspiring defined mug people science skin treat treated
I was an aspiring astrophysicist, and that's how I defined myself, not by my skin color. People didn't treat me as someone with science ambitions. They treated me as someone they thought was going to mug them, or who was a shoplifter.