Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot
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from this distant vantage point
the Earth might not seem in any particular interest
but for us
it's different
consider again that dot
that's here
that's home
that's us
on it
everyone you love
everyone you know
everyone you ever heard of every human being who ever was
lived out their lives
the aggregate of our joy and suffering
thousands of confident religions ideologies and economic doctrines
every hunter and forager
every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization
every king and peasant
every young couple in love
every mother and father
hopeful child
inventor and explore
every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician
every superstar, every supreme leader
every saint and sinner in the history of our species
lived there
on a mote of dust
suspended
in a sunbeam
the Earth is a very small stage
in a fast
cosmic arena
think of the rivers of blood
spilled by all those generals emperors
so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters
of a fraction
of a dot
think of the endless cruelties visited
by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel
on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants
of some other corner
how frequent their misunderstandings
how eager they are to kill one another
how fervent their hatreds
our posturings
our imagines self-important
the delusion we have some privileged position in the universe
are challenged
by this point of pale light
our planet
is a lonely speck
in the great enveloping cosmic dark
in our obscurity
in all this vastness
there is no hint
the help will come from elsewhere
to save us from ourselves
it has been said that astronomy's humbling and character building
experience
there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image
of our tiny the world
to me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another
and to preserve and cherish
the pale blue dot, the only home
we've ever known