Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumCarl Sagan Appreciation Thread
?[font color=black size=3 face=Georgia]"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 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, Pale Blue Dot, 1994[/font]
November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996
Please post your favourite quotes and pictures.
EvolveOrConvolve
(6,452 posts)I wish for eternal life if only so Sagan could be around forever.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)After my mom died I felt the same way.
mountain grammy
(27,008 posts)I feel lucky that he was alive during my lifetime. As I type, in the background I'm hearing a voice on the teevee saying imagine what it was like to live in the time of Jesus. No way! I'm glad I got to live in the time of Carl Sagan.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I used to watch Cosmos with my dad.
Carl Sagan inspired millions.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)we were lucky.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)flygal
(3,231 posts)onager
(9,356 posts)Don't think I've seen you around these parts. If you've been posting here a long time, I apologize. I'm old and easily confused. (Lurking Cyber-Missionaries: not THAT confused.)
That looks like Beryl Markham in your avatar. I'm a big fan of aviation history, so here's a link to the most famous woman aviator nobody ever heard of - Laura Ingalls (no relation to the "Little House On The Prairie" author).
Ms. Ingalls was the first human to fly all of South America solo, and the first woman to solo over the Andes.
Largely forgotten today, I guess, because she was convicted of working for the Nazis. It probably didn't help that she lived in Burbank, CA, very close to a huge strategic asset, the Lockheed aircraft factory:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_(aviator)
flygal
(3,231 posts)I don't think I've posted in this forum before. I just saw the Carl Sagan post and find him very interesting.
Thanks for the link!
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I hope Neil deGrasse Tyson will continue to appeal to children, got to get them hooked on science when they're young.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)I guess I will just have to buy the DVDs.
deucemagnet
(4,549 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)edgineered
(2,101 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)Truly an inspiration.
Some ones I liked:
And of course, all of his more well-known quotes as well. The man was brilliant.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Those are great, I wish he would have lived longer. Imagine if he could have gone to Mars...
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)that are pertinent today:
Oh no, did he say the "d" word!
And possibly my favorite.....
trotsky
(49,533 posts)But those other two are some of his best as well.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Yes he did.
RussBLib
(9,473 posts)LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)And it seems to have come much sooner than he would have hoped.
That book had a lot of great quotes....like the whole book.
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)actually, you should post this in GD, or I will if you'd like
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)and I was "discovered" by two other closeted atheists.
Where I live and work that's huge.
One started leaving little heathen love notes, the other started fixing things for me at night. They didn't identify themselves for weeks.
A love story.
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)Three heretics in one workplace. What are the odds? Lucky you.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)He died well within my lifetime, but I didn't realize it at the time, all the more reason to treasure todays great thinkers, Nye, Tyson, Dawkins, et-all, while we still can.
As an aside I was at the book store today and just happened to find this in the bargin cart:
(there was a hard cover as well, but paperback is so much easier to read)
Goes on the shelf next to Hawkings and Cox.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Just look at what they're doing to Tyson - and he's a teddy bear.