James Leonard

“Computers will soon be driving all our cars— faster, more efficiently, and with ever-fewer traffic fatalities, instead of the thirty-six thousand deaths we currently endure annually in the US and 1.3 million worldwide. So whether or not the universe can make something more complex than itself, we've managed to make something more capable than ourselves, and we've only just begun.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

“The denial of climate change poses an existential threat to the stability of civilization— a position that lands squarely amid conservative platforms, although there's been some progress over the years. Initially, the conservative battle cry was denial, which later morphed into an admission that climate change is real, but humans aren't causing it.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

“Of the fifteen most religious states, eleven had laws on the books ready to ban or greatly restrict abortion the moment the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that decriminalized abortion. Clearly, belief in a loving, compassionate, Christian God and in the sanctity of all human life (viable or not) strongly motivates these views. They're not being bad citizens, they're being good Christians— although ten of those same eleven states also embrace the death penalty.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

“Earth is instead a giant killing machine. Holding aside all the climactic and geologic forces that would just as soon have you dead, such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, there's no end of creatures that want to suck your blood, inject you with venom, infect your physiology, or simply eat you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization