Form this distant vantage point,
the earth might not seem of 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 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.
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 of our tiny 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.
Carl Sagan
1934-1996
