Carl Sagan was a highly popular astronomer and astrochemist who is also world famous for writing popular science books and poems. The following excerpt is taken from one of his writings "Pale blue dot." This piece talks about how Sagan viewed our planet from the outside, as the pale blue dot that would be the last thing any of us would see of it if we could ever leave our native parish and travel outbound through the eternal cold.
Read Sagan's words. They have that special kind of humility which only science can give, and which we cannot afford to forget. I came across this in one of my classes and thought I should share with you. Hope you like it
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 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, Pale Blue Dot, 1994