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'.
i understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. i understood that, finally and absolutely, i alone exist. all the rest, i saw, is merely what pushes me, or what i push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. i create the whole universe, blink by blink.
The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.
I feel kind of depressed today... Do you ever have the feeling that life has passed you by? Worse than that... Sometimes I think life and I are going in opposite directions!
Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never even have imagined. The coincidences or little miracles that happen every day of your life are hints that the universe has much bigger plans for you than you ever dreamed of for yourself.
Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.
Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.
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