Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.
Interpretation
Seek truth through evidence and maintain a questioning mindset.
This quote by Neil Degrasse Tyson emphasizes the importance of being guided by empirical evidence in our pursuit of knowledge. It encourages a critical and inquisitive approach to understanding the world, reminding us that questioning established beliefs and seeking evidence can lead to greater insight and discovery.
In practice
In a scientific debate, you can use this quote to emphasize the necessity of evidence-based reasoning.
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.
Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time.
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.
We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space.
Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It's also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
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