“I'm not telling you it's going to be easy - I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.”
―
―
“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.”
― Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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.”
― Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
― The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections
― The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
― Great Expectations
― Great Expectations
IIT Bombay Readers Group
— 474 members
— last activity Jan 30, 2015 01:20AM
This is a club for Readers at IIT Bombay, to discuss books they like and would want to read.
50 books to read before you die
— 11818 members
— last activity Nov 03, 2025 06:20AM
These are the named books: 1 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien 2 1984 by George Orwell 3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 4 The Gra ...more
Kartik’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Kartik’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Kartik
Lists liked by Kartik

























