NITCH

Photo of Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan // "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, 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 hopeful child, every mother and father, 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... Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds... 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… 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."