Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” —Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut

In the end, there’s not much real or chromosomal about our appearance. The beauty we’ve created is not even skin-deep. It washes off in the shower.

While there, I came to resent labels of all kinds. What are they, if not intellectually lazy ways of asserting you know everything about a person you’ve never met?