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
Interpretation
This quote reflects optimism about a growing trend of accountability for informed discourse.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson expresses a sense of hope regarding societal change, emphasizing that people are becoming more vigilant about the information shared by those in positions of power. He highlights the role of individuals in holding leaders accountable for their statements, suggesting a shift towards a more informed and discerning public discourse.
In practice
During a seminar on leadership, this quote can inspire discussions about the importance of informed decision-making.
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.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf, That color every drop they hold, To change the lifeless wine of grief To living gold.
The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.
If we want to create change, we all have to be feminists - men, women, everyone needs to acknowledge that. Sometimes I have more in common with the man than I do the woman in the room.
We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!
You gotta make a change. Its time for us as a people to start making some changes, lets change the way we eat, lets change the way we live, and lets change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so its on us, to do what we gotta do to survive.
Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.
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