Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagen

Pale Blue Dot

Earth seen from 4 thousand thousand thousand miles distant

NASA 30 year anniversary
of VOYAGER photo, re-imaged

 

Look again at 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, 

every hopeful child, 

every 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 humbling 

and a 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 

this pale blue dot, 

the only home we've ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Lightly edited for translation from prose to poem... DZ