Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Happy Carl Sagan Day!

    One of my absolute favorite quotes ever written. Miss ya Carl. You were such an incredible luminary!

    “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

    #2
    GodI miss that man. We recently re-watched the original Cosmos series and while some of the graphics and science are outdated, the message is even more relevant that ever.

    OptiBoard Administrator
    ----
    OptiBoard has been proudly serving the Eyecare Community since 1995.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by Steve Machol View Post
      GodI miss that man. We recently re-watched the original Cosmos series and while some of the graphics and science are outdated, the message is even more relevant that ever.
      Indeed! His "The Demon Haunted World" remains one of my favorite literary works of all time!

      Comment


        #4
        "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." -C. Sagan

        Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. - Richard P. Feynman

        Experience is the hardest teacher. She gives the test before the lesson.


        Comment

        Working...
        X