
„Der Regen machte das beste Geräusch, das wir, die wir viel außerhalb von Häusern leben, jemals hörten.“
— Ernest Hemingway US-amerikanischen Schriftsteller 1899 - 1961
Consider again 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.
Quelle: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg
Kontext: Consider again 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.
— Ernest Hemingway US-amerikanischen Schriftsteller 1899 - 1961
— Josef Kirschner österreichischer Journalist 1931 - 2016
DIE EGOISTEN-BIBEL; Anleitung fürs Leben, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knauer Nachf. München, TB Ausgabe 2002, ISBN 3-426-82327-6, 14. S. 145.
— George Orwell britischer Schriftsteller, Essayist und Journalist 1903 - 1950
— Woody Allen US-amerikanischer Komiker, Filmregisseur, Autor und Schauspieler 1935
— Nicholas Sparks US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller 1965
— Ernest Hemingway US-amerikanischen Schriftsteller 1899 - 1961
— Anne Frank Opfer des Holocaust und Tagebuch-Autorin 1929 - 1945
— Stephen King US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller 1947
— Thomas von Aquin dominikanischer Philosoph und Theologe 1225 - 1274
— Charles Bukowski US-amerikanischer Dichter und Schriftsteller 1920 - 1994
— Malcolm X US-amerikanischer Führer der Bürgerrechtsbewegung 1925 - 1965
— Kai Meyer Deutscher Schriftsteller, Journalist, Drehbuchautor 1969
Dschinnland
— Thornton Wilder US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller 1897 - 1975
— Tennessee Williams US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller 1911 - 1983
— Franz Kafka österreichisch-tschechischer Schriftsteller 1883 - 1924
Tagebücher 1910-1923
— Robin Williams US-amerikanischer Schauspieler und Komiker 1951 - 2014
— Eleanor Roosevelt US-amerikanische Menschenrechtsaktivistin 1884 - 1962