Quotation
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“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 · Thinkers beyond philosophy · Modern · 1994
What does it mean?
The smallness, for him, issues in a responsibility: deal more kindly with one another, and look after the only home we have so far. The usual reading treats the sentence as the moral of the photograph, not as a mood of awe with nowhere to go. A competing reading hears a vague niceness that any landscape poster could carry. He has earned it, in the reflection, by listing the blood spent to be masters of a fraction of a dot. The sentence is still Pale Blue Dot, the opening. Kindly is an obligation he thinks the picture supports. It is not a caption he forgot to justify.
Did Carl Sagan really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. His English, later in the reflection that begins 'Look again at that dot'. He has just said that astronomy is humbling, and that the photograph challenges our imagined self-importance.
Where it comes from
Pale Blue Dot (1994), the same opening reflection
Approximate date: 1994.
How to use it
A campaign in a coastal town that loves the photograph and will not talk about how the people in the town treat one another has kept the image and dropped the verb. Deal more kindly is the verb. Cherish the dot is the other one. Neither is automatic.
A mindset reading
Humility that does not change conduct is the special effect without the sentence. He ties them. You can reject the tie. You should not pretend he stopped at the camera.
Understand the philosophy
Same reflection as the dot sentence, Pale Blue Dot, 1994. The key clause is responsibility. The earlier sentences make the stage small. This one says what he thinks follows. It is not a policy document. It is the ethic he was willing to attach to a photograph from the edge of the solar system.
- ethics
- meaning
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The smallness, for him, issues in a responsibility: deal more kindly with one another, and look after the only home we have so far. The usual reading treats the sentence as the moral of the photograph, not as a mood of awe with nowhere to go. A competing reading hears a vague niceness that any landscape poster could carry. He has earned it, in the reflection, by listing the blood spent to be masters of a fraction of a dot. The sentence is still Pale Blue Dot, the opening. Kindly is an obligation he thinks the picture supports. It is not a caption he forgot to justify.
Did Carl Sagan really say this?
Well attested. His English, later in the reflection that begins 'Look again at that dot'. He has just said that astronomy is humbling, and that the photograph challenges our imagined self-importance.
Which work is it in?
Pale Blue Dot (1994), the same opening reflection Approximate date: 1994.