Consider again 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 More about this quote Tags: wonder humanity inspiration kindness space vastness Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. —Dwight D. Eisenhower More about this quote Tags: justice war hunger humanity Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. —Ralph Waldo Emerson More about this quote Tags: humanity history commonality mind power Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace. —Joseph Conrad in Under Western Eyes More about this quote Tags: humanity peace people universality Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It’s as though we have two selves or two natures or two wills with two contrary viewpoints. . . . Your lower self sees you as the center of the universe — your higher self sees you as a cell in the body of humanity. —Peace Pilgrim More about this quote Tags: humanity self selves self-importance Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. —Lewis Thomas More about this quote Tags: humanity life fear worrying discontent Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. —Douglas Adams More about this quote Tags: humanity humor happiness money Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself. —Richard Burton More about this quote Tags: humanity religion ego self-regard Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. —Eric Hoffer More about this quote Tags: humanity love reality Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. —Don Marquis More about this quote Tags: humanity progress Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. —Richard Feynman More about this quote Tags: humanity future responsibility Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. —Mark Twain More about this quote Tags: humanity wrong right Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It has always been part of basic human experience to live in a culture of wilderness. There has been no wilderness without some kind of human presence for several hundred thousand years. Nature is not a place to visit, it is home. —Gary Snyder More about this quote Tags: humanity perception experience nature Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. —Steven Weinberg More about this quote Tags: humanity life universe tragedy grace Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. —Howard Zinn More about this quote Tags: humanity prison Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email