Top 100 Neil DeGrasse Tyson Quotes

#1. How much would you pay ... for the Universe?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#2. Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#3. No matter what eyewitness testimony is in the court of law, it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#4. If you find life on Europa [Jupiter's moon], like, what would you call it? Would it be, like, Europeans?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#5. The most successful people recognize that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#6. God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#7. All tweets are tasty. Any tweet anybody writes is tasty. So, I try to have each tweet not simply be informative, but have some outlook, some perspective that you might not otherwise had.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#8. I believe that the manned space program can engage the public by advancing the space frontier. Every next mission takes you farther out in space than you were before, either technologically or in terms of distance.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#9. There are as many atoms in each molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. This is true for dogs, and bears, and every living thing. We are, each of us, a little universe.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#10. WhenIWasYourAge: It took a week to learn whether your photos came out okay.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#11. I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#12. This general flattening of objects that rotate is why Earth's pole-to-pole diameter is smaller than its diameter at the equator. Not by much: three-tenths of one percent - about twenty-six miles.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#13. Merry Christmas to all. A Pagan holiday (BC) becomes a Religious holiday (AD). Which then becomes a Shopping holiday (USA).

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#14. When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#15. Let's find a new way to think about the entire taxonomy of solar system objects, and not clutch to this concept of 'planet,' which, of course, only ever meant, 'Do you move against the background stars, regardless of what you're made of?'

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#16. If the people of Comic-Con ruled the world ... then tomorrow would be invented every day.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#17. I see all this talk about jobs going overseas as a symptom of the absence of innovation. And the absence of innovation is a symptom of there being no major national priority to advance a frontier.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#18. UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public. In fact, they're lower. You say, why is that so? Well, because we know what the hell we're looking at!

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#19. We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.

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#20. Also, where does your identity come from? Your memory, of course.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#21. Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#22. ... and I submit to you, that science, scientific discovery, especially cosmic discovery, does not become mainstream until the artist embraces the fruits of those discoveries.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#23. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we are pioneers, or discoverers, or adventurers. We went to the Moon because it was the militaristically expedient thing to do.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#24. It's odd that the word 'atheist' even exist. I don't play golf, is there a word for non-golf players ?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#25. I'd ask [God] why he keeps trying to kill us all with disease, pestilence, and natural disasters. I'd ask why 99% of all species there ever were are now extinct
if God works in mysterious ways, that way is mysteriously genocidal.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#26. The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#27. As Einstein once wrote (more ringingly in German than in this English translation by one of us [DG]) to honor Isaac Newton: Look unto the stars to teach us How the master's thoughts can reach us Each one follows Newton's math Silently along its path.

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#28. If the universe is anything, it should be fun.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#29. It turns out our brain is sensitive, maybe too sensitive, to motion. It's a survival mechanism.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#30. I want to create the airplane that flies in the rarified atmosphere of Mars. This is what galvanizes a generation to want to become scientists and engineers in the first place, not we need a scientist to develop a plane that's 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#31. Dark matter is a mysterious substance that has gravity but does not interact with light in any known way.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#32. If you're a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you're not going to be a good scientist.

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#33. There's an old saying in the space community: 'If God wanted us to be a spacefaring species, he would have given us a moon'.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#34. To be scientifically literate is
to empower yourself to
know when someone else is
full of bullshit.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#35. I remain unconvinced that anything other than rapid decomposition is the fate of my body and mind after death.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#36. It's better to understand something than to memorize something.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#37. No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#38. I am not the most annoying person to bring to a movie 'cause I basically hold it in and write about it later or tweet about it. The most annoying people to bring to movies, I think we all agree, are those who read the book first.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#39. When you are a hammer, all of your problems will look like nails to you.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#40. The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#41. We hunger for significance, for signs that our personal existence is of special meaning to the universe. To that end, we're all too eager to deceive ourselves and others, to discern a sacred image in a grilled cheese sandwich or find a divine warning in a comet

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#42. One should not be too distracted by definitions. Ideas transcend definitions.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#43. If that's how you want invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time goes on.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#44. Claiming there is no other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming there are no whales in the ocean.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#45. Odd how often blood is shed to obtain freedom from those in power. Oppressors must be the most insecure people in the world.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#46. There's a lot of memorization that goes on in school. You memorize vocabulary words and all these sorts of things.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#47. I love the future we might invent for ourselves that I have not yet dreamt of.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#48. Need a distraction today? Not only does 12 + 1 = 11 + 2, but the letters "twelve plus one" rearrange to give you "eleven plus two."

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#49. The caricature of science is that we hold tight to the theories we have, and shun challenges to them. That's just not true. In fact, we hold our highest rewards for those scientists who can prove others wrong. And by the way, they are famous in their own lifetimes. We don't wait until they're dead.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#50. What are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#51. As an American, I grew up in an era where we led the world in everything. Everything!

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#52. I claim that space is part of our culture. You've heard complaints that nobody knows the names of the astronauts, that nobody gets excited about launches, that nobody cares anymore except people in the industry. I don't believe that for a minute.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#53. Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If there's someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#54. It's quite literally true that we are star dust, in the highest exalted way one can use that phrase ... I bask in the majesty of the cosmos. I use words, compose sentences that sound like the sentences I hear out of people that had revelation of Jesus, who go on their pilgrimages to Mecca.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#55. Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#56. People are really excited about robotic exploration. I understand the feeling there because, in fact, robots can do things humans can't. They can survive harsh conditions, they can explore places we would never go, plus you never actually have to bring them back.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#57. I would say - and paint doesn't peel unless it's acrylic paint, so maybe it is acrylic paint that they're using, not oil paint. So let me say yes, it would be acrylic house paint, which, when it dries, peels very nicely. So let's go with that.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#58. Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes ... The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#59. Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families.

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#60. Merlin prefers to think of space as the regions between all the particles of all the atoms of the universe.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#61. All the traditional STEM fields, the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, are stoked when you dream big in an agency such as NASA.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#62. The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It's a slightly bigger moon; I ain't using the adjective 'supermoon.'

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#63. When Kennedy said, 'Let's go to the moon,' we didn't yet have a vehicle that wouldn't kill you on launch. He said we'll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people.

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#64. In some ways, we are traveling in time now. We just happened to be prisoners of the present in the eternal transition from the past to the future.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#65. I'm perennially intrigued how people who lead largely evidence-based lives can, in a belief-based part of their mind, be certain that an invisible, divine entity created an entire universe just for us, or that the government is stockpiling space aliens in a secret desert location.

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#66. For decades, we've been trying to cook up the building blocks of life, in the lab, and recreate the origins of it all, but the parts didn't seem to fit together, until now.

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#67. The universe's destiny has very little to do with the near-term destiny of Earth.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#68. In short, were it not for our ability to analyze spectra, we would know next to nothing about what goes on in the universe.

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#69. If you slid Pluto to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate that ice, and it would grow a tail. Now that's no kind of behavior for a planet.

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#70. What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#71. With no gravitational force to work against, your body not only doesn't need the same amount of muscle and bone, it starts breaking them down. As on Earth, so in space: use it or lose it. And exercise may not solve the problem.

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#72. Many academicians don't even own a television, much less watch one.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#73. I don't like trying to influence politicians, who are themselves representative of huge numbers of people. As an educator, I'd rather enlighten the people and educate the people and let they be the ones who put the pressure on their elected officials.

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#74. Can space exist in the absence of matter, if matter defines the edge of space?" Merlin

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#75. If the whole world shared such experiences, we would then have common dreams and everybody could begin thinking about tomorrow. And if everybody thinks about tomorrow, then someday we can visit the sky together.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#76. Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature.

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#77. If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you.

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#78. 'Cosmos' wouldn't deserve its place in primetime evening network television were it not a landscape on which compelling stories were told. People, when they watch TV in the evening, want to see stories, and science simply tells the best stories.

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#79. Physics is the only profession in which prophecy is not only accurate but routine.

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#80. All the nine-planet people out there: Get over it. There's eight.

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#81. On some issues, I'm a staunch Conservative - like curtailing greenhouse gas emissions so that we can Conserve the environment.

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#82. What I'm saying is, when different experiments give you the same result, it is no longer subject to your opinion. That's the good thing about science: It's true whether or not you believe in it. That's why it works.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#83. Our planet Earth has a diameter of 0.04 light-seconds. Neptune's orbit spans 8 light-hours. The stars of the Milky Way galaxy delineate a broad, flat disk about 100,000 light-years across. And the Virgo supercluster of galaxies, to which the Milky Way belongs, extends some 60 million light-years.

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#84. Next time you're stunned by a large moon on the horizon, bend over and view it between your legs. The effect goes away entirely.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#85. I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religions document.

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#86. I'm not criticizing the science in Star Wars. That's a waste of everybody's time.

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#87. People who are scientists today are scientists in spite of the system, typically, not because of it.

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#88. You have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have scientific literacy in topics that matter for future political issues.

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#89. There's no doubt about it: more varieties of carbon-based molecules exist than all other kinds of molecules combined.

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#90. Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move.

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#91. To learn more about science, turn off your electronic device and go outside and look around a bit. Nature is calling you. Go on. The internet will still be here.

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#92. No day before October 10, 1582, actually occurred on the Gregorian calendar for that was when the calendar was implemented officially.

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#93. Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite 'telescope envy' at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

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#94. 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.

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#95. Countless women are alive today because of ideas stimulated by a design flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#96. 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 Tyson

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#97. Long ago Mars was an oasis of running water.Today the Martiansurfaceis a sterile,barren desert. Here on Earth, who knows what climactic knobs we unwittingly turn,which might one day render Earth as dry and lifeless as Mars. (From the cover of Old Poison by Joan Francis)

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#98. A state of negative energy means that you are essentially getting something for nothing.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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#99. Space only becomes ordinary when the frontier is no longer being breached.

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#100. The depth of experience fine wine can bring to a dinner, particularly a bottle that has been through the past 100 years, makes you take stock of your own life.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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