A Favoured Quote

Today has been a heavy reading day as I hurtle towards the deadline for the Maine conference. It has been made possible by an awesome pot of fresh coffee. However, in my readings, amongst other silly things, I found a quote by Carl Sagan which really struck a chord regarding our place in the grand scheme of things. It comes from this image taken 6 billion KM from earth (Earth is the white speck halfway down the brown band):



"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. 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."