Between two evils I always pick the one I never tried before.

— Mae West

Contemplate no less than what you yourself have not given.

No matter the cause, no matter whether it be just or unjust, imagine the sacrifice of so many in so short a time.

Listen to the still voices of all those who have come before.

Let heartfelt appreciation and respect fill your thoughts of too many young men and women who sacrificed all for that in which they believed.

Hear the midnight chimes as they sound for lives shattered, cut short in mere infancy.

Ponder more than 230 years of heritage paid for with blood other than your own.

Consider shadows dark and deep into which fell those in uniform.

Honor our brothers and sisters, and respect the price they paid so that we might live a better life.

I doubt any amongst us could easily deny the allure of the soul-entrapping curse of true love, the heartfelt cage in which we find our thoughts and feelings when another overpowers us with unconquerable ardor.

Tell me what is this hidden mystery concealed beyond the ages, lurking behind appearances, yet making its home in the heart of being?

What is this unconditioned thought that comes as the cause of all effects, as the effect of all causes?

What is this wakefulness that encompasses both death and life and molds them into a dream stranger than life and deeper than death?

Tell me, O people, tell me! Who among you would not wake from the sleep of life if love were to brush your spirit with its fingertips?

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 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