The Best Speech about Humanity - Carl Sagan

From this distant vantage point, Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us it is different. Let's consider that point again. That's here. That's home. That's us. In it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever existed, lived their lives. The sum of our joy and suffering, thousands of trusted religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, 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 explorer, every moral teacher, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there, on a speck of dust suspended in a lightning bolt.

Sun. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic stage. Let us think of the rivers of blood shed by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become momentary owners of a fraction of a point. Let us think of the infinite cruelties that the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel inflict on the barely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds! Our postures, our imagined self-importance, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a solitary point in the great cosmic darkness that surrounds it. In our darkness, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, that our species can migrate to. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Whether we like it or not, for the moment, our position is on Earth. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human vanity than this distant image of our little world.

To me, it underscores our responsibility to treat each other more kindly and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known.