Suspended in a Sunbeam

(Spoken excerpt from the 1994 book "Pale Blue Dot" by Carl Sagan)

...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