I said that if an alien came to visit, I'd be embarrassed to tell them that we fight wars to pull fossil fuels out of the ground to run our transportation. They'd be like, 'What?'
Interpretation
The quote critiques humanity's priorities, highlighting the absurdity of fighting over fossil fuels.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's reflection illustrates the absurdity and embarrassment of human conflict driven by the pursuit of fossil fuels, suggesting that if an outsider were to observe our actions, they would find it illogical and troubling. This quote provokes thought about the values that society holds and challenges us to consider more rational and humane pursuits.
In practice
In a discussion about environmental ethics at a conference.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
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.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.
it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists
When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
Insanity is in the eyes of the beholder. So I will continue to live my personal folly.
From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.
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