# A particularly pithy passage **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 30, 2006, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501 "2006-03-30T04:01:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Available\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@Available\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Available_Jones)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501/1 "2006-03-30T04:01:14Z")
In 1990, the space probe Voyager I was finished with its amazing flyby of the outer planets and was about to leave our solar system. We turned it to look back on our planet. It took [this picture](http://obs.nineplanets.org/psc/img/pbd.jpg). In May 1996, Carl Sagan took inspiration from this picture to deliver a commencement address, the sentiment of which stirs me. This is part of what he said: "We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known." I only read this speech online much later after he gave it, and long after his death in 1996. But I am affected by the truth in those words, especially the “no help from elsewhere” part. Heck, it’s how I got my location in my user profile. Any Dopers wanna quote their own particularly pithy passage? ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501/2 "2006-03-30T05:12:44Z")
My first is also a Sagan: > [@](#): > > In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. John Donne: > [@](#): > > No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. And the magnificent H.L. Mencken: > [@](#): > > Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501/3 "2006-03-30T13:40:44Z")
Emily Dickenson: “Hope is a thing with wings” Though I am a basically optimistic person I can find myself in pretty dark places at times. Riciting this simple thought to myself often lifts me up. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501/4 "2006-03-30T13:44:56Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Emily Dickenson: > > “Hope is a thing with wings” > > Though I am a basically optimistic person I can find myself in pretty dark places at times. Riciting this simple thought to myself often lifts me up. Feathers. I meant feathers. “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…” sigh. Thursday morning blues… ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501/5 "2006-03-30T17:41:51Z")
That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes. “Hope” Sometimes when I’m lonely, Don’t know why, Keep thinkin’ I won’t be lonely By and by. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-particularly-pithy-passage/350501/6 "2006-03-30T17:42:58Z")
Whoopsie. Meant to say that was Langston Hughes, and the first poem is called “Justice”.