Are you looking for Pale Blue Dot quotes by Carl Sagan?
On 14 February 1990, Voyager 1 space probe took a photo of Earth from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers that would become one of the most widely recognized images of our planet. The image is called Pale Blue Dot, and it was taken as the spacecraft was leaving our solar system.
When Voyager 1 completed its mission and going to leave the solar system. At the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan, it was commanded by NASA to turn the camera and took the last photo of Earth across a great expanse of space.
The phrase “Pale Blue Dot” was given to an image by Carl Sagan (Also read Carl Sagan quotes) when he published one of his books under the same name in 1994.
In the photo, Earth is a tiny speck in the vastness of space. It’s a humbling reminder of how small we are in the grand scheme of things. But more than that, it’s a reminder of how precious and fragile our planet is.
We need to remember Pale Blue Dot every day because it reminds us of the importance of taking care of the Earth.
Here we are sharing a collection of Pale Blue Dot book quotes by the astronomer and author Carl Sagan that will remind you of how small you are in the grand scheme of this universe.
Pale Blue Dot Quotes
“For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was ‘Apollo’ really about?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We tend not to be especially critical when presented with evidence that seems to confirm our prejudices.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The Milky Way Galaxy is one of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies notable neither in mass nor in brightness nor in how its stars are configured and arrayed. Some modern deep sky photographs show more galaxies beyond the Milky Way than stars within the Milky Way. Every one of them is an island universe containing perhaps a hundred billion suns. Such an image is a profound sermon on humility.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“There is every reason to think that in the coming years Mars and its mysteries will become increasingly familiar to the inhabitants of the Planet Earth.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The American and Russian capabilities in space science and technology mesh; they interdigitate. Each is strong where the other is weak. This is a marriage made in heaven – but one that has been surprisingly difficult to consummate.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Then science came along and taught us that we are not the measure of all things, that there are wonders unimagined, that the Universe is not obliged to conform to what we consider comfortable or plausible. We have learned something about the idiosyncratic nature of our common sense. Science has carried human self-consciousness to a higher level. This is surely a rite of passage, a step towards maturity.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Quotes
“If we’re stuck on one world, we’re limited to a single case; we don’t know what else is possible. Then—like an art fancier familiar only with Fayoum tomb paintings, a dentist who knows only molars, a philosopher trained merely in NeoPlatonism, a linguist who has studied only Chinese, or a physicist whose knowledge of gravity is restricted to falling bodies on Earth—our perspective is foreshortened, our insights narrow, our predictive abilities circumscribed. By contrast, when we explore other worlds, what once seemed the only way a planet could be turns out to be somewhere in the middle range of a vast spectrum of possibilities. When we look at those other worlds, we begin to understand what happens when we have too much of one thing or too little of another. We learn how a planet can go wrong.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“What do we really want from religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such thoughts into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe — which seems truly pointless — but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged (…) 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The symbolism seemed so apt. The same technology that can propel apocalyptic weapons from continent to continent would enable the first human voyage to another planet. It was a choice of fitting mythic power: to embrace the planet named after, rather than the madness ascribed to, the god of war.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Apart from a thin film of life at the very surface of the Earth, an occasional intrepid spacecraft, and some radio static, our impact on the Universe is nil. It knows nothing of us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“I do not think it irresponsible to portray even the direst futures if we are to avoid them we must understand that they are possible. But where are the alternatives Where are the dreams that motivate and inspire We long for realistic maps of a world we can be proud to give to our children. Where are the cartographers of human purpose Where are the visions of hopeful futures of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Quotes About Universe
“Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of _Apollo_. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival.
Travel is broadening. It’s time to hit the road again.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds – to say nothing of stars or galaxies – humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We succeeded in taking that picture from [deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a 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, ideaologies 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.
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 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 inhabitands of some other corner of the dot. 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. It is up to us… To my mind, there is perhaps no better demostration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We must surrender our skepticism only in the face of rock-solid evidence. Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity. Where we are ignorant, we withhold belief. Whatever annoyance the uncertainty engenders serves a higher purpose: It drives us to accumulate better data. This attitude is the difference between science and so much else. Science offers little in the way of cheap thrills. The standards of evidence are strict. But when followed they allow us to see far, illuminating even a great darkness.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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, 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. 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. 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“On the scale of worlds—to say nothing of stars or galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief and sedentary hiatus we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds though through the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“On Titan the molecules that have been raining down like manna from heaven for the last 4 billion years might still be there largely unaltered deep-frozen awaiting the chemists from Earth”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Book Quotes
“In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas …” To the ancient Greeks and Romans, the known world comprised”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Since much of the ocean floor remains unexplored (except perhaps for still-classified data acquired by the U.S. and Soviet navies), we may know more about the surface topography of Venus than about any other planet, Earth included.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology—but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“universe is almost incompatible with life—or at least what we understand as necessary for life: Even if every star in a hundred billion galaxies had an Earthlike planet, without heroic technological measures life could prosper in only about 10-37 the volume of the Universe. For clarity, let’s write it out: only 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 1 of our universe is hospitable to life. Thirty-six zeroes before the one. The rest is cold, radiation-riddled black vacuum.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“In every culture, the sky and the religious impulse are intertwined. I lie back in an open field and the sky surrounds me. I’m overpowered by its scale. It’s so vast and so far away that my own insignificance becomes palpable. But I don’t feel rejected by the sky. I’m a part of it – tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity. And when I concentrate in the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty out aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“When it got to be time to design the week—a period of time, unlike the day, month, and year, with no intrinsic astronomical significance—it was assigned seven days, each named after one of the seven anomalous lights in the night sky. We can readily make out the remnants of this convention. In English, Saturday is Saturn’s day. Sunday and Mo[o]nday are clear enough. Tuesday through Friday are named after the gods of the Saxon and kindred Teutonic invaders of Celtic/Roman Britain: Wednesday, for example, is Odin’s (or Wodin’s) day, which would be more apparent if we pronounced it as it’s spelled, “Wedn’s Day”; Thursday is Thor’s day; Friday is the day of Freya, goddess of love. The last day of the week stayed Roman, the rest of it became German.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“How much more satisfying had we been placed in a garden custom-made for us, its other occupants put there for us to use as we saw fit. There is a celebrated story in the Western tradition like this, except that not quite everything was there for us. There was one particular tree of which we were not to partake, a tree of knowledge. Knowledge and understanding and wisdom were forbidden to us in this story. We were to be kept ignorant. But we couldn’t help ourselves. We were starving for knowledge—created hungry, you might say. This was the origin of all our troubles. In particular, it is why we no longer live in a garden: We found out too much. So long as we were incurious and obedient, I imagine, we could console ourselves with our importance and centrality, and tell ourselves that we were the reason the Universe was made. As we began to indulge our curiosity, though, to explore, to learn how the Universe really is, we expelled ourselves from Eden. Angels with a flaming sword were set as sentries at the gates of Paradise to bar our return. The gardeners became exiles and wanderers. Occasionally we mourn that lost world, but that, it seems to me, is maudlin and sentimental. We could not happily have remained ignorant forever.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Pale Blue Dot Book Quotes About Earth
“If you’re young, it’s just possible that we will be taking our first steps on near-Earth asteroids and Mars during your lifetime. To spread out to the moons of the Jovian planets and the Kuiper Comet Belt will take many generations more. The Oort Cloud will require much longer still. By the time we’re ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. The different circumstances we will be living under will have changed us. Prostheses and genetic engineering will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We’re an adaptable species.
It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, a species returned to circumstances more like those for which it was originally evolved, more confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent—the sorts of beings we would want to represent us in a Universe that, for all we know, is filled with species much older, much
more powerful, and very different.
The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little about it.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“And yet there is no sign of humans in this picture, not our reworking of the Earth’s surface, not our machines, not ourselves: We are too small and our statecraft is too feeble to be seen by a spacecraft between the Earth and the Moon. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of worlds—to say nothing of stars or galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Each Voyager is itself a message. In their exploratory intent, in the lofty ambition of their objectives, in their utter lack of intent to do harm, and in the brilliance of their design and performance, these robots speak eloquently for us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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 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: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“There’s plenty of housework to be done here on Earth, and our commitment to it must be steadfast. But we’re the kind of species that needs a frontier—for fundamental biological reasons. Every time humanity stretches itself and turns a new corner, it receives a jolt of productive vitality that can carry it for centuries.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“It is conventional wisdom now that anything built by the government will be a disaster. But the two “Voyager” spacecraft were built by the government (in partnership with that other bugaboo, academia). They came in at cost, on time, and vastly exceeded their design specifications–as well as the fondest dreams of their makers. Seeking not to control, threaten, wound, or destroy, these elegant machines represented the exploratory part of our nature set free to roam the Solar System and beyond. This kind of technology, the treasures it uncovers freely available to all humans everywhere, has been, over the last few decades, one of the few activities of the United States admired as much by those who abhor many of its policies as by those who agree with it on every issue. “Voyager” cost each American less than a penny a year from launch to Neptune encounter. Missions to the planets are one of those things–and I mean this not just for the United States, but for the human species–that we do best.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The first law of bureaucracy is to guarantee its own continuance.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Best Pale Blue Dot Book Quotes
“We must surrender our skepticism only in the face of rock-solid evidence. Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“U.S. launch vehicles are these days too feeble to get such a spacecraft to Jupiter and beyond in only a few years by rocket propulsion alone. But if we’re clever (and lucky), there’s something else we can do: We can (as Galileo also did, years later) fly close to one world, and have its gravity fling us on to the next. A gravity assist, it’s called. It costs us almost nothing but ingenuity. It’s something like grabbing hold of a post on a moving merry-go-round as it passes—to speed you up and fling you in some new direction. The spacecraft’s acceleration is compensated for by a deceleration in the planet’s orbital motion around the Sun. But because the planet is so massive compared to the spacecraft, it slows down hardly at all. Each Voyager spacecraft picked up a velocity boost of nearly 40,000 miles per hour from Jupiter’s gravity. Jupiter in turn was slowed down in its motion around the Sun. By how much? Five billion years from now, when our Sun becomes a swollen red giant, Jupiter will be one millimeter short of where it would have been had Voyager not flown by it in the late twentieth century.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“As children, we fear the dark. Anything might be out. here. The unknown troubles us. Ironically, it is our fate to live in the dark. This unexpected finding of science is only about three centuries old. Head out from the Earth in any direction you choose, and—after an initial flash of blue and a longer wait while the Sun fades—you are surrounded by blackness, punctuated only here and there by the faint and distant stars. Even after we are grown, the darkness retains its power to frighten us. And so there are those who say we should not inquire too closely into who else might be living in that darkness. Better not to know, they say. There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Of this immense multitude, could it be that our humdrum Sun is the only one with an inhabited planet? Maybe. Maybe the origin of life or intelligence is exceedingly improbable. Or maybe civilizations arise all the time, but wipe themselves out as soon as they are able. Or, here and there, peppered across space, orbiting other suns, maybe there are worlds something like our own, on which other beings gaze up and wonder as we do about who else lives in the dark…Life is a comparative rarity. You can survey dozens of worlds and find that on only one of them does life arise and evolve and persist… If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage—or to the advantage of the human species… In our time we’ve crossed the Solar System and sent four ships to the stars… But we continue to search for inhabitants. We can’t help it. Life looks for life.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“But if the Bible is not everywhere literally true, which parts are divinely inspired and which are merely fallible and human? As soon as we admit that there are scriptural mistakes (or concessions to the ignorance of the times), then how can the Bible be an inerrant guide to ethics and morals?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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, 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”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Our species has discovered a way to communicate through the dark, to transcend immense distances. No means of communication is faster or cheaper or reaches out farther. It’s called radio.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness, and there’s no one to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we’re tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we’re safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“I … had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before,” wrote Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century explorer of the Pacific, “but as far as it was possible for man to go.” Two centuries later, Yuri Romanenko, on returning to Earth after what was then the longest space flight in history, said “The Cosmos is a magnet … Once you’ve been there, all you can think of is how to get back.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Famous Pale Blue Dot Book Quotes
“the most important step we can take toward Mars is to make significant progress on Earth. Even modest improvements in the social, economic, and political problems that our global civilization now faces could release enormous resources, both material and human, for other goals.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“In the littered field of discredited self-congratulatory chauvinisms, there is only one that seems to hold up, one sense in which we are special: Due to our own actions or inactions, and the misuse of our technology, we live at an extraordinary moment, for the Earth at least—the first time that a species has become able to wipe itself out.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Freedom of belief is pernicious,” Bellarmine wrote on another occasion. “It is nothing but the freedom to be wrong.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“But for us, it’s different. 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, 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Volcanos have naturally been regarded with fear and awe. When medieval Christians viewed the eruption of Mt. Hekla in Inceland and saw churning fragments of soft lava suspended over the summit, they imagined they were seeing the souls of the damned awaiting entrance to Hell. “Fearful howlings, weeping and gnashing of teeth”, “melancholy cries and loud wailings” were dutifully reported. The glowing red lakes and sulfurous gases within the Hekla caldera were thought to be a real glimpse into the underworld and confirmation of folk beliefs in Hell (and, by simmetry, in its partner, Heaven).”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and said, ‘This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed’?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Due to our own actions or inactions, and the misuse of our technology, we live at an extraordinary moment, for the Earth at least – the first time that a species has become able to wipe itself out. But this is also, we may note, the first time that a species has become able to journey to the planets and the stars.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Vast migrations of people—some voluntary, most not—have shaped the human condition. More of us flee from war, oppression, and famine today than at any other time in human history. As the Earth’s climate changes in the coming decades, there are likely to be far greater numbers of environmental refugees. Better places will always call to us. Tides of people will continue to ebb and flow across the planet. But the lands we run to now have already been settled. Other people, often unsympathetic to our plight, are there before us. *”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Quotes About Space
“As we identify the planets of other stars, as we find other words of roughly the size and mass of Earth, we will scrutinize them for life.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Can we, who have made such a mess of this world, be trusted with others?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“On the scale of worlds—to say nothing of stars or galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal. It”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“And after the Earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it is burned t a crisp or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being- and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We lack consensus about our place in the Universe. There is no generally agreed upon long-term vision of the goal of our species—other than, perhaps, simple survival. Especially when times are hard, we become desperate for encouragement, unreceptive to the litany of great demotions and dashed hopes, and much more willing to hear that we’re special, never mind if the evidence is paper-thin.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We are too small and our statecraft is too feeble to be seen by a spacecraft between the Earth and the Moon. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“This zest to explore and exploit, however thoughtless its agents may have been, has clear survival value. It is not restricted to any one nation or ethnic group. It is an endowment that all members of the human species hold in common.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Tides of people will continue to ebb and flow across the planet. But the lands we run to now have already been settled. Other people, often unsympathetic to our plight, are there before us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The emerging picture of the early Solar System does not resemble a stately progression of events designed to form the Earth. Instead, it looks as if our planet was made, and survived, by mere lucky chance,* amid unbelievable violence. Our world does not seem to have been sculpted by a master craftsman. Here too, there is no hint of a Universe made for us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Pale Blue Dot Quotes By Carl Sagan
“Would you say, “Billy, be home by the time the Earth has rotated enough so as to occult the Sun below the local horizon”? Billy would be long gone before you’re finished.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“And when I concentrate on the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty our aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs, when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture and built cities and set out to subdue the Earth.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“It is now almost possible to assign color combinations, based on the colors of clouds and sky, to every planet in the Solar System—from the sulfur-stained skies of Venus and the rusty skies of Mars to the aquamarine of Uranus and the hypnotic and unearthly blue of Neptune. Sacre-jaunt, sacre-rouge, sacre-vert. Perhaps they will one day adorn the flags of distant human outposts in the Solar System, in that time when the new frontiers are sweeping out from the Sun to the stars, and the explorers are surrounded by the endless black of space. Sacre-noir.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Early in my studies, I was amazed and disappointed that such a view had ever been taken seriously, that for planets of other stars, absence of evidence had been considered evidence of absence.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“.. 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’ ”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Pale Blue Dot Book Quotes By Carl Sagan
“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Consider again that dot [Earth]. 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, 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We’re Johnny-come-latelies. We live in the cosmic boondocks. We emerged from microbes and muck. Apes are our cousins. Our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control. There may be much smarter and very different beings elsewhere. And on top of all this, we’re making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason – and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour 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. … 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: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher Columbus do not tell much about the builders of the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria or about the principle of the caravel. These spacecraft their designers builders navigators and controllers are examples of what science and engineering set free for well-defined peaceful purposes can accomplish. Those scientists and engineers should be role models for an America seeking excellence and international competitiveness. They should be on our stamps.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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, 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot quotes: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Did you like these Pale Blue Dot quotes?
In 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan delivered a stirring speech about our place in the universe. He reflected on the Pale Blue Dot photograph, which shows Earth as a tiny speck orbiting a sun that’s just one pixel in a vast cosmic image.
Sagan’s words have never been more relevant than they are today. We are living in a time when it’s easier than ever to forget our connection to the rest of the world. But when we take the time to look up at the night sky we can see just how small and insignificant we are in this vast cosmic space.
We hope you like these Carl sagan quotes from the Pale Blue Dot book and learn a thing or two from it.
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