Selected Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Quotes
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot- "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" is a 1994 book by the astronomer Carl Sagan. It is the sequel to Sagan's 1980 book: "Cosmos". It was inspired by the famous 1990 Pale Blue Dot photograph of which he provided a poignant description.
He mixes philosophy about the human place in the universe in the book, together with a description of the current knowledge about the Solar System. He also detailed a human vision for the future. The audiobook of Pale Blue Dot, which was read by him, was selected by the Library of Congress in 2023 for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry. It was deemed as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Selected Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Quotes:
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Goals
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Goals
“That's what this book is about: other worlds, what awaits us on them, what they tell us about ourselves, and - given the urgent problems our species now faces - whether it makes sense to go.
Should we solve those problems first?
Or are they a reason to go?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Goals, Problems
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Technology
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Technology
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Technology
“Planetary exploration satisfies our inclination for great enterprises and wanderings and quests that has been with us since our days as hunters and gatherers on the East African savannahs a million years ago. By chance—it is possible, I say, to imagine many skeins of historical causality in which this would not have transpired—in our age we are able to begin again.
Exploring other worlds employs precisely the same qualities of daring, planning, cooperative enterprise, and valor that mark the finest in military tradition. Never mind the night launch of an Apollo spacecraft bound for another world. That makes the conclusion foregone. Witness mere F-14s taking off from adjacent flight decks, gracefully canting left and right, afterburners flaming, and there’s something that sweeps you away—or at least it does me. And no amount of knowledge of the potential abuses of carrier task forces can affect the depth of that feeling. It simply speaks to another part of me. It doesn’t want recriminations or politics. It just wants to fly.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Technology
“Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there&pos;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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Technology
“Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there&pos;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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Technology
“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, Science, Technology, Goals
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society, Technology, Goals
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society, Technology, Goals
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society, Science
“Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a "glorious" experiment - the "completing of the Creation." The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like "completion" can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Belief, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. 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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Belief, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Belief, Science
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Belief, Science
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” 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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Belief, Science
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Goals, Power, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them. Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all human beings will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms.
Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society
“For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: "We came in peace for all Mankind." As the United States was dropping 7 ½ megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society
“.. 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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Society
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature, Life
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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Nature, Life, Goals
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science
“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, Science, Nature
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Science, Nature
“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, Science, Nature
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life, Nature, Intelligence/Wisdom, Courage, Truth, Goals
“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
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Success
“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 “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.
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.
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