The Numinous Words of Carl Sagan

The words of this testimony come from the great man in the form of a book. You can learn more about that work here: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

And here are those precious words:

“Look again at 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.”

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Add to all of this yet another profoundly moving and inspirational work of art, that of Russell Ferrante and Jimmy Haslip’s composition “Greenhouse” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse) adorned by one of the most beautiful things that I have EVER heard for string orchestra by the great Vincent Mendoza and you have a collective feast for the soul indeed. I’ve been meaning to edit these two things together forever, but after the surprise events of November 5, 2025 I felt that the time had finally come to do it.

I believe that we need Carl’s words NOW more than ever. And when you add the music of the Yellowjackets (circa 1991, the beginning of what I call “The Bob Mintzer Era” Bob Mintzer: tenor sax, soprano sax, bass clarinet, Russell Ferrante: keyboards, Jimmy Haslip: bass, and Will Kennedy: drums and percussion) the message becomes even more profound and visceral.

The perfect combination of words can speak volumes. But when such wordsmithery meets the deeper language that is music, we can truly plumb the depths of our humanity.

Thank you Carl Sagan and The Yellowjackets.