To be scientifically literate is
to empower yourself to
know when someone else is
full of bullshit. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition. — Stephen Jay Gould
Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism. — David Suzuki
Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. — Rosalind Franklin
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. — Carl Sagan
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. — Adam Smith
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute. — J. G. Ballard
Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use. — Linda Ellerbee
There is more to literacy than 'reading' and 'writing'. — Strive Masiyiwa
Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind. — Abdus Salam
Science Education Quotes
The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel. — John Glenn
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. — Marie Curie
Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise. — Grace Hopper
I think people who vibrate at the same frequency, vibrate toward each other. They call it, in science, sympathetic vibrations.
The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. — Richard P. Feynman
We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. — Jerome Bruner
They have an amazing proliferation of TV channels now: The all-cartoon channel, the 24-hour-science fiction channel. Of course, to make room for these they got rid of the Literacy Channel and the What's Left of Civilization Channel. — Dennis Miller
He invited people to sign a petition that demanded either strict control of, or a total ban on, dihydrogen monoxide.... Yes, 86 percent of the passersby voted to ban water (H2O) from the environment. Maybe that's what really happened to all the water on Mars. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow's problems flow. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
It is astonishing to realize that until Galileo performed his experiments on the acceleration of gravity in the early seventeenth century, nobody questioned Aristotle's falling balls. Nobody said, Show Me! — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science literacy consists in the ability and the desire to follow reports of new scientific advances, throughout your whole life. — Philip Kitcher
We think scientific literacy flows out of how many science facts can you recite rather than how was your brain wired for thinking. And it's the brain wiring that I'm more interested in rather than the facts that come out of the curriculum or the lesson plan that's been proposed. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
You can't train kids in a world where adults have no concept of what science literacy is. The adults are gonna squash the creativity that would manifest itself, because they're clueless about what it and why it matters. But science can always benefit from the more brains there are that are thinking about it - but that's true for any field. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
The center line of science literacy - which not many people tell you, but I feel this strongly, and I will go to my grave making this point - is how you think. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
I've found that no one complains about pop culture being a source of someone lecturing to them. If someone's telling you about Kim Kardashian, you're not going to accuse them of lecturing to you. If I can explore an intersection between pop culture and science literacy, then it generally will not come across as a lecture. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
While we may lose track of certain goals intermittently throughout the decades, I think we as a nation can be nimble when we need to be. All the buzz today is on the need for science literacy. That is on the agenda in ways it hasn't been in previous decades. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
We're an elective democracy where science and technology will define where the economically strong countries in the world will be. And science and technological literacy is important for security, as well. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested. — James Murdoch
Not enough of our society is trained how to understand and interpret quantitative information. This activity is a centerpiece of science literacy to which we should all strive-the future health, wealth, and security of our democracy depend on it. Until that is achieved, we are at risk of making under-informed decisions that affect ourselves, our communities, our country, and even the world. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Last I checked, Bill Gates was worth $50 billion. If the average employed adult, who is walking in a hurry, will pick up a quarter from the sidewalk, but not a dime, then the corresponding amount of money given their relative wealth that Bill Gates would ignore if he saw it lying on the street is $25,000. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
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
I suppose I can live with missing decimals, missing floors to tall buildings, and floors that are named instead of numbered. A more serious problem is the limited capacity of the human mind to grasp the relative magnitudes of large numbers. Counting at the rate of one number per second...to count to a trillion takes 32,000 years, which is as much time as has elapsed since people first drew on cave walls. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
A common way to compute density is, of course, to take the ratio of an object's mass to its volume. But other types of densities exist, such as the resistance of somebody's brain to the imparting of common sense. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
There is a theorem that colloquially translates, You cannot comb the hair on a bowling ball. ... Clearly, none of these mathematicians had Afros, because to comb an Afro is to pick it straight away from the scalp. If bowling balls had Afros, then yes, they could be combed without violation of mathematical theorems. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
And I don't care what else anyone has ever told you, the Sun is white, not yellow. Human color perception is a complicated business, but if the Sun were yellow, like a yellow lightbulb, then white stuff such as snow would reflect this light and appear yellow-a snow condition confirmed to happen only near fire hydrants. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
I didn't even know there were stars to look at to not see. If you don't know that they're there, you don't know that you're missing them. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
We fail in even the simplest of all scientific observations-nobody looks up anymore. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
A television advertisement must illustrate the scientific method to substantiate any claim.... That is why stains are lifted, ring-around-the-collar is removed, paper towels become soaked, excess stomach acid is absorbed, and headaches go away-all during the commercial. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
I would teach how science works as much as I would teach what science knows. I would assert (given that essentially, everyone will learn to read) that science literacy is the most important kind of literacy they can take into the 21st century. I would undervalue grades based on knowing things and find ways to reward curiosity. In the end, it's the people who are curious who change the world. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
In Conclusion
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