Carl Sagan was a member of Voyager's imaging team,and it was his idea that Voyager take one last picture.

A generation before,an astronaut on the last Apollo flight to the Moon had taken a picture of the whole Earth，the planet as a world without borders.

It became an icon of a new consciousness.Carl realized the next step in this process.He convinced NASA to turn the Voyager 1 camera back towards Earth when the spacecraft went beyond Neptune for one last look homeward at what he called the pale blue 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.”

How did we,tiny creatures living?on that speck of dust,ever manage to figure out?how to send spacecraft out among the stars?of the Milky Way?

Only a few centuries ago,a mere second of cosmic time,we knew nothing?of where or when we were.

Oblivious to the rest?of the cosmos,we inhabited a kind of prison--a tiny universe bounded by a nutshell.How did we escape?from the prison?It was the work?of generations of searchers who took five

simple rules to heart.

1.Question authority.

2.No idea is true?just because someone says so,including me.

3.Think for yourself.

4.Question yourself.

5.Don't believe anything?just because you want to.

Believing something?doesn't make it so.Test ideas?by the evidence gained from observatio?and experiment.

If a favorite idea fails?a well-designed test,it's wrong!Get over it.Follow the evidence,wherever it leads.If you have no evidence,reserve judgment.And perhaps the most?important rule of all...

Remember, you could be wrong.Even the best scientists have been wrong?about some things.Newton, Einstein,and every other great scientist?in history,they all made mistakes.

Of course they did--they were human.Science is a way to keep?from fooling ourselves...and each other.

Have scientists known sin?

Of course.We have misused science,just as we have every other tool?at our disposal,and that's why we can't afford to leave it in the hands?of a powerful few.

The more science?belongs to all of us,the less likely?it is to be misused.

These values?undermine the appeals of fanaticism and ignorance and, after all,the universe is mostly dark,dotted by islands of light.

Learning the age of the Earth?or the distance to the stars or how life evolves--what difference does that make?

Well, part of it depends?on how big a universe?you're willing to live in.Some of us like it small.That's fine.

Understandable.But I like it big.

And when I take all of this?into my heart and my mind,I'm uplifted by it.And when I have that feeling,

I want to know that it's real,that it's not just something?happening inside my own head.

Because it matters what's true,and our imagination is nothingcompared with?Nature's awesome reality.

I want to know

What's in those dark places,and what happened

before the Big Bang.

I want to know what lies?beyond the cosmic horizon,and how life began.

Are there other places in the cosmos where matter and energy?have become alive...and aware?

I want to know my ancestors--all of them.

I want to be?a good, strong link in the chain of generations.

I want to protect my children and the children?of ages to come.

We, who embody?the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings?of the cosmos,we've begun to learn the story?of our origins--star stuff contemplatin?the evolution of matter,tracing that long path by which?it arrived at consciousness.

We and the other living things?on this planet?carry a legacy?of cosmic evolution?spanning billions of years.If we take that knowledge?to heart.

If we come to know and love nature as it really is,then we will surely be?remembered by our descendants?as good, strong links?in the chain of life.

And our children will continue?this sacred searching,

seeing for us as we have seen?for those who came before,discovering wonderyet undreamt of...

in the cosmos.