CREDIT: NASA/JPL/VOYAGER

Here it is: the Earth from Voyager 1, momentarily in a sunbeam. Take a look. From the outskirts of the planetary part of the solar system, it's a pale blue dot.  That's us. That's home. That's where we are. On it, everybody you loved, everybody you know, everybody you have ever heard of, lived out their days. The aggregate of all our joy and suffering, thousands of confident ideologies, religions, 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 revered teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there.  The Earth is a very small stage in a great cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, presidents and prime ministers and party leaders, so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a corner of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one part of the dot on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of another part 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, seem to me 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 there is anyone who will come and save us from ourselves.  -Carl Sagan October 13, 1994

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so –Hamlet  Act II scene 2         

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. -Joseph Campbell

LA BOCCA DE LA VERITA'

There are of course those who do not want us to speak.  I expect even now orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way.  Why?  Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.  Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth; and the truth is there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? -V, James McTeigue's V for Vendetta

"When a man lies he murders a part of the world." -Merlin, John Boorman's Excalibur

I'll give ya a dose
But it can never come close
To the rage built up inside of me
Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy
                                                               -Wake Up by Rage Against The Machine

“Well, let’s see if the nut that runs this place can help us.” –Sheriff Wydell, Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses