Carl Sagan – Pale Blue Dot Speech

Astronomer Carl Sagan (1934-1996) did ground-breaking work in planetary science and astronomy, but became better known for his amazing ability to communicate science — and the value of science — to the public. He also had an enormous impact on me (author Jeffrey Bennett), because it was his show Cosmos that led me to get my PhD in astrophysics (after studying biophysics as an undergraduate). Although I only had the privilege of meeting him in person a couple of times, you’ll see his influence in virtually all my writing.

If you can spare just 4 minutes (you can!), I strongly encourage everyone to listen to Sagan’s famous Pale Blue Dot speech in the video below. Note: You’ll find references to the Pale Blue Dot speech in my books Max Goes to Jupiter and The Scale of the Universe.

Video of Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot Speech with Sagan’s voice

Text of Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot Speech

“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 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 (1934-1996)

Also see this poster of Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot speech and this wonderful cartoon version of the speech.

More About Carl Sagan

You can learn much more about Carl Sagan at carlsagan.com. I also encourage you to:

Read some of Sagan’s many books. My personal favorites are The Demon-Haunted World and his novel Contact, which was also made into a great movie (starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey).
Watch some or all of his original Cosmos series (episode 3 is my personal favorite); the more recent update with Neil deGrasse Tyson is also excellent.