In ancient Athens, citizens could vote each year to banish any person who they thought was becoming too powerful and therefore, becoming a threat to democracy. The process was called Ostracism. An Athenian statesman, Aristides, was exiled in 482 BC due to this process. Aristides, known for his military command during the Persian Wars, was respected and even nicknamed "the Just." However, an illiterate citizen asked him to write his own name on an ostracon, a piece of pottery used for voting, because he was irritated by Aristides' reputation. Aristides' rivalry with Themistocles, a popular figure among the poor, was another reason for his ostracism. Plutarch suggests that their rivalry began in their youth over a boy named Stesilaus from Ceos. In 483 BC, a discovery of silver led to a debate between Aristides, who wanted to distribute the silver to the citizens, and Themistocles, who proposed using it to expand naval power. The ostracism of 482 BC was based on support for either Themistocles' or Aristides' policies. With Aristides out of the picture, Themistocles continued to consolidate power, but he became arrogant and made enemies. Aristides lived to witness the ostracism of Themistocles in either 472 or 471 BC.

Pale Blue Dot is a photo of Earth that was taken by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990 from a distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) as it was leaving our solar system. This is what Carl Sagan said about the photo: "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 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.”