I thought it would be a good idea,
Just after Saturn
To have them take one last glance homeward.
Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel
Hardly distinguishable from the other points of light
Voyager would see;
Nearby planets, far off suns.
But precisely because of the obscurity
Of our world thus revealed,
Such a picture might be worth having
Consider again that dot.
That's here. That's home. That's us.
On it, everyone you love, everyone you know,
Everyone you've ever heard of,
Every human being who ever was lived out their lives.
The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings;
Thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines;
Every hunter and forager; every hero and coward;
Every creator and destroyer of civilizations;
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
How fervent their hatreds.
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.
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.
Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand
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.
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 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