I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God. I just don't - I don't have the energy for that, and so I... Agnostic separates me from the conduct of atheists whether or not there is strong overlap between the two categories, and at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all.
Interpretation
The speaker expresses a desire to avoid discussions that focus on disbelief in God and prefers not to be categorized.
In this quote, Neil DeGrasse Tyson shares his reluctance to engage in conversations that dwell on disbelief in God. He identifies as agnostic, indicating that he is more comfortable defining himself beyond labels like atheist, which he feels could impose limitations on his beliefs. Ultimately, Tyson suggests a preference for personal freedom over fitting into societal categories.
In practice
During a philosophical debate at a university seminar.
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.
I do need publicity but not for what I do for good. I need publicity for my book. I need publicity for my fights. I need publicity for my movie but not for helping people. Then it is no longer sincere.
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything.
Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
There are colors we can't see, but they're connected to the ones we can, There's a connection between everything.
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.
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