point of pale light

Look at that point. That's right here. That is our home. That is us.
In it, everyone you love, everyone you meet, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived his life.
The sum of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of self-confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward.every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every moral teacher, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there -

on a speck of dust suspended in a ray of sunlight.

Earth is a very small stage in the vast cosmic arena.
Think of the rivers of blood shed by all those generals and emperors, so that in their glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a point.
Think of the endless cruelties committed by the inhabitants of one corner of the point on the barely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner.
How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds are. Our positions, our imaginary importance, the illusion that we occupy a privileged position in the Universe ... is challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely spot in the great enveloping cosmic gloom.
In our darkness — in all this vastness — there is not a hint that help is coming from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
Earth is the only known world so far that harbors life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.

Visit, yes. Settling down, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment Earth is where we need to stay.
It has been said that astronomy is a builder of humility and character.
Perhaps there is no better demonstration of the folly of human concepts than this distant image of our tiny world. For me, it underscores our responsibility to treat each other better, and to preserve and love that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan