PALE BLUE DOT - An Important Message from Carl Sagan

foreigner, that's home, it's us, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of every human being who ever lived their lives, the Aggregates or joy and suffering, thousands of safe religions, economic ideologies and doctrines, the 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, enter and Explorer, every teacher of morality, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there in the As dust in a ray of sun, the Earth is a very small stage in a fast Cosmic Arena, think of the rivers of blood that all those generals and emperors build so that in glory and triumph can become the momentary Masters of a fraction of a DOT. think of the infinite cruelties that the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel inflict on the barely distinguishable inhabitants of some other court, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds, our posturing, our imagined importance , the illusion that we have some privilege to position ourselves in the universe we are challenged by this point of

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light our planet is a solitary speck in the great cosmic darkness enveloping in our darkness in all this immensity there is no indication that help will come from another place to save ourselves 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, we still don't like it or not, for the moment. The Earth is where we position ourselves. It has been said that astronomy is a character-building and humbling 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. That's the only home we've ever known.