Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for a secular farewell, free from religious customs.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke conveys his preference for a non-religious funeral, suggesting that he values a personal and introspective approach to death over traditional religious rites. This perspective highlights a broader philosophical stance on the significance of individual choices in matters of life and death, emphasizing rationalism and personal belief systems rather than communal religious practices.
In practice
During a discussion about personal beliefs regarding funerals, someone might reference this quote to advocate for non-religious ceremonies.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
What I have experienced, and experienced repeatedly, is the silence of God. For many years, this was a distressing matter for me. I did not consider it an experience, but the absence of an experience.
Our Founding Fathers understood that our country would survive and flourish if our Nation was committed to good character and an unyielding dedication to liberty and justice for all.
I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself. The objective of avoiding total destruction must have priority over any other objective.
A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.
Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.
How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
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