QuoteProject
You can make a stack high enough to reach the moon and back, and only then will you have used your 100 billion hamburgers. This is terrifying news to cows.
Neil Degrasse Tyson
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote highlights the absurdity of overconsumption and its impact on the environment.

Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote uses hyperbolic imagery to emphasize the staggering number of hamburgers consumed and the environmental consequences of such consumption. The reference to a stack high enough to reach the moon conveys not only the sheer volume of hamburgers but also serves as a satirical commentary on human dietary habits and their implications for livestock, particularly cows. It draws attention to the disconnect between human civilization's appetite and the realities faced by the animals that contribute to our food supply.

Themes

HamburgerEnvironmentConsumptionHumorCows

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about sustainability, you might use this quote to punctuate the effects of mass meat consumption on the planet.

More from Neil Degrasse Tyson

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.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
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.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
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.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
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.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
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.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
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.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead

Similar quotes

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
Albert EinsteinRead
It is shameful that there are so few women in science. [...] In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine.
Chien-Shiung WuRead
It is a curious historical fact that modern quantum mechanics began with two quite different mathematical formulations: the differential equation of Schroedinger and the matrix algebra of Heisenberg. The two apparently dissimilar approaches were proved to be mathematically equivalent.
Richard P. FeynmanRead
A lot of my research time is spent daydreaming - telling an imaginary admiring audience of laymen how to understand some difficult scientific idea.
Leonard SusskindRead
A scientist is as weak and human as any man, but the pursuit of science may ennoble him even against his will.
Isaac AsimovRead
In the history of physics, there have been three great revolutions in thought that first seemed absurd yet proved to be true. The first proposed that the earth, instead of being stationary, was moving around at a great and variable speed in a universe that is much bigger than it appears to our immediate perception. That proposal, I believe, was first made by Aristarchos two millenia ago ... Remarkably enough, the name Aristarchos in Greek means best beginning.
Edward TellerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.