Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot — Transcript

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1. 0:00From this distant vantage point, the
2. 0:02Earth might not seem of any particular
3. 0:05interest.
4. 0:07But for us, it's different.
5. 0:10Consider again that dot that's here.
6. 0:14That's home. That's us. On it, everyone
7. 0:19you love, everyone you know, everyone
8. 0:22you ever heard of, every human being who
9. 0:25ever was lived out their lives.
10. 0:29the aggregate of our joy and suffering.
11. 0:32Thousands of confident religions,
12. 0:35ideologies, and economic doctrines.
13. 0:37Every hunter and forager, every hero and
14. 0:41coward, every creator and destroyer of
15. 0:43civilization,
16. 0:45every king and peasant, every young
17. 0:48couple in love, every mother and father,
18. 0:51hopeful child, inventor and explorer,
19. 0:55every teacher of morals, every corrupt
20. 0:57politician, every superstar, every
21. 1:01supreme leader, every saint and sinner
22. 1:04in the history of our species lived
23. 1:06There on the mode of dust suspended in a
24. 1:11sunbeam.
25. 1:13The earth is a very small stage in a
26. 1:17vast cosmic arena.
27. 1:21Think of the rivers of blood spilled by
28. 1:25all those generals and emperors
29. 1:28so that in glory and triumph they could
30. 1:30become the momentary masters
31. 1:33of a fraction of a dot.
32. 1:37Think of the endless cruelties visited
33. 1:39by the inhabitants of one corner of this
34. 1:42pixel on the scarcely distinguishable
35. 1:45inhabitants of some other corner. How
36. 1:48frequent their misunderstandings.
37. 1:51How eager they are to kill one another.
38. 1:54How fervent their hatreds.
39. 1:57Our posturings,
40. 2:00our imagined self-importance, the
41. 2:03delusion that we have some privileged
42. 2:05position in the universe are challenged
43. 2:08by this point of pale light.
44. 2:12Our planet
45. 2:14is a lonely speck in the great
46. 2:17enveloping cosmic dark.
47. 2:20In our obscurity,
48. 2:22in all this vastness,
49. 2:25there is no hint that help will come
50. 2:27from elsewhere to save us from
51. 2:30ourselves.
52. 2:32The Earth is the only world known so
53. 2:34far, to harbor life. There is nowhere
54. 2:37else, at least in the near future, to
55. 2:40which our species could migrate. Visit,
56. 2:43yes, settle, not yet.
57. 2:48Like it or not, for the moment, the
58. 2:51Earth is where we make our stand.
59. 2:54It has been said that astronomy is a
60. 2:56humbling and characterbuilding
61. 2:58experience.
62. 3:00There is perhaps no better demonstration
63. 3:02of the folly of human conceits than this
64. 3:05distant image of our tiny world.
65. 3:09To me, it underscores our responsibility
66. 3:13to deal more kindly with one another and
67. 3:16to preserve and cherish the Pale Blue
68. 3:19Dot, the only home we've ever known.