To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.
¶ NY Times (25 Dec 1968)
On the "Earth rising over the Moon" photo sent back from an Apollo mission.
When collected in "Bubble of Blue Air," Riders on the Earth; Essays and Recollections, epigraph (1978), he phrased it: "To see the earth as we now see it, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night — brothers who see now they are truly brothers."
