Science Outreach Quotes

Anything that promotes a kernel of science, even though it's exaggerated and hyped by Hollywood, I think is a step forward. We in the ivory tower ultimately have to realize that in some sense we have to sing for our supper.

The absolute worst thing that you ever can do, in my opinion, in bringing science to the general public, is be condescending or judgmental. It is so opposite to the way science needs to be brought forth.

As far as I'm concerned, raising the bar or encouraging kids in large numbers to be interested in science, I can't think of anything I'd rather see happen.

After I had this idea to be Bill Nye the Science Guy, I wore straight ties the first couple times, and then I got this thing going and I started wearing bow ties.

The world is too complicated to have scientists only talking to scientists.

Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent.

Science is too important not to be a part of popular culture.

Our focus should be on developmental dimensions of atomic science with a special outreach to India's youth.

We really think it is a good thing for scientists to spend a little bit of their time either in the community or in schools or helping to train high school teachers.

The show [ StarTalk ] was born as a radio program out of a National Science Foundation grant.

Campaigning against religion can be socially counter-productive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science.

The Connecticut Center for Science and Exploration will be a building that will connect the excitement of science to the surrounding streets, river and highway. These forms are ambitious and dynamic. They appear to reach out beyond their physical limits.

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.

With science becoming far more accessible to all of us, I've become a pretty avid reader and devourer of it. One of the objectives that I had working with Fringe was to get more people talking about it because it's such fun.

We have to change the way people look at scientists. Today, they are the nerds, the geeks. Instead, we want some of the cool kids to say, 'Hey, this is all right.'

Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians.

We have been talking about public engagement for a decade. For me it is about recognising that the mission of science has to be embedded within our culture - the direction in which science is going has to be determined by all of us, and so we need a dialogue with the public.

Anything, even the conceptually most complex material, can be written for general audiences without any dumbing down. Of course you have to explain things carefully. This goes back to Galileo, who wrote his great books as dialogues in Italian, not as treatises in Latin. And to Darwin, who wrote The Origin of Species for general readers. I think a lot of people pick up Darwin's book and assume it must be a popular version of some technical monograph, but there is no technical monograph. That's what he wrote. So what I'm doing is part of a great humanistic tradition.

Science is very cross-generational; you're not just aiming it at twentysomethings, or eightysomethings. Every town's got a really broad selection of people and age groups interested in science.

When you're reaching out to people beyond the scientific community, image does matter.

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

Astrobiology is a great point of contact for science outreach. The public is naturally interested in extra-terrestrial life. Astrobiology provides an accessible point of access that leads to deeper questions.

I'd love to present a popular science programme because it's something I feel very passionate about.

I'm not a scientist, I was not a good science student, I felt effectively alienated from science throughout my young life, and it was only when I became an adult that I began to really appreciate from a completely different angle the power of science.