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 or 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
Explorer 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
vast cosmic arena think of the rivers of
blood spilled by all those generals and
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 imagined
self-importance the delusion that 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 that help will come from
elsewhere to save us from ourselves the
earth is the only world known so far to
harbor life there is nowhere else at
least in the near future to which our
species could migrate
visit yes settle
not yet like it or not for the moment
the earth is where we make our stand it
has been said that astronomy is a
humbling and character-building
experience there is perhaps no better
demonstration of the folly of human
conceits than this distant image 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
