25 Brilliant Life Lessons From Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the brilliant astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, Twitter enthusiast, TV show host, and science communicator, has dropped some serious knowledge over the years, including these fantastic life lessons.

1.) “I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.”

2.) “We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.”

3.) "Name-calling is what happens when you desperately want to argue, but you are in fact inarticulate."

4.) “The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them.”

5.) "Okay to encourage others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But if you do, just remember, some people have no boots."

6.) “Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.”

7.) “I have a personal philosophy in life: if somebody else can do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And what I want to do is find things that would represent a unique contribution to the world -- the contribution that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make happen. Those are my priorities in life.”

8.) “What you need, above all else, is a love for your subject, whatever it is. You've got to be so deeply in love with your subject that when curve balls are thrown, when hurdles are put in place, you've got the energy to overcome them.”

9.) “I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.”

10.) "If you're good at BS'ing others, then all it means is that you rarely hang around people who are smarter than you."

11.) “It's okay not to know all the answers. It's better to admit our ignorance than to believe answers that might be wrong. Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what's really there.”

12.) "From what I have seen of society, the number of people who will tell you what you cannot accomplish in life is limitless."

13.) "If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth."

14.) "Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening."

15.) “Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That's a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing.”

16.) “Being at the top of your game intellectually, philosophically, politically, is not a forever thing.”

17.) "Good education is not what fills your head with facts but what stimulates curiosity. You then learn for the rest of your life."

18.) "Ever notice how Vampires and dead people, who sit up in their caskets, do so with a straight back? They must have good abs."

19.) “There are no limits when you are surrounded by people who believe in you, or by people whose expectations are not set by the short-sighted attitudes of society, or by people who help to open doors of opportunity, not close them.”

20.) "There's no greater incentive to lie than the threat of punishment for telling the truth."

21.) "An informed opinion is never based on somebody else’s opinion, lest you empower others to do your thinking for you."

22.) “Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.” 

 23.) “No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.”

24.) “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.” 

25.) "Those who feel superior are often compelled to tell others, presumably because it’s not otherwise obvious to anyone."