Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

The universe forces those who live in it to understand it.

The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten.