Neil deGrasse Tyson

“At the end of the day, is it too much to ask to bring out the alien? You bring out the alien, then no one will ever have to ask you again: ‘Do you believe in aliens?’ … That’s kind of what I’m waiting for, instead of fuzzy videos.’”

“So you're [going to] have a visiting alien from another planet that has no DNA in common with us at all, or no DNA at all. And somehow it's [going to] walk on two legs with a head, eyes, nose, mouth. So I would be shocked if it was humanoid,”

“I even picture the scenario in my head: I’m sitting out there alone, and a beam of light comes down,”

“If China says we’re going to put military bases on Mars, we’re there in 10 months,”

“We have mapped the moon and Mars to higher precision than the bottom of the ocean.”

“If you’re going to pitch tent on the moon, you want to do it where you have free water,”

“When people look up, they dream more,”

“The promise of economic return. The mandates of your king or the royalty or deity. But the biggest driver of all is the ‘I don’t want to die’ drive.”

“That brought a helicopter with it. If the human is going to do science, they’re going to bring some apparatus to make the measurement. So just send the apparatus, leave the human back.”

“People are now asking questions that are a little more fun, rather than, 'How hot is the sun?' Stuff you can just look up.”

“Everyone that studied the question of life in the universe… would not deny the likelihood of life elsewhere,”

“Without the moon, astronomers would be very happy, because the sky would be dark all the time,”

“Now, you can type anything into Google, into ChatGPT. If you have ever seen those replies that come in from AI, it's got no soul. It's got no personality.”

“I think what matters are your ambitions and then, depending on your resources, you can achieve it slowly or quickly.”

“because I spent some time with your Prime Minister. We chatted briefly during his trip to New York about future of space exploration in India, and he expressed strong interest in bringing private enterprises into that sector. He sees that this will be a natural evolution.”

“But otherwise, I think we're ready for it. Of course, we're ready. We've been ready.”

“First, he’s a nice guy, plus he’s smart, and he’s also scientifically literate. I think he sees his value there because a politician who’s also a diplomat would value that role if you’re meeting someone from another land, another place, another time.”

“It’s an attempt to anchor the conversation, to celebrate the imaginations that have created aliens in our pop culture, and to pose a set of questions for those who may have had a one-on-one encounter with aliens,”

“The real transition for me was the high-ranking officials who came forth in Congress,”

“Maybe there’s some takeaways that offer insights into how you think about the world, how we think about each other and the future of our civilization.”

“That triggered interest in the press, which stimulated investments that became the birth of the aviation industry.”

“There have only ever been three motivations to match an expense of that magnitude,”

“We have an SUV-sized rover on Mars right now,”

“We know more about the surfaces of the moon and Mars than we know about the ocean bottom,”

“It's a romp through the universe, celebrating people's curiosity,”

“Back then, you could have a simple question, but you couldn't get an easy answer,”