Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the vast number of deceased individuals compared to those currently living, suggesting a collective presence of history.
Arthur C. Clarke's quote emphasizes the idea that for every person alive today, there are many who have lived before them, underscoring the weight of history and the generations that have come before us. It invites reflection on the legacy, wisdom, and experiences of those who have passed, reminding us that each living person is a product of their ancestors and the society shaped by them.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of historical awareness, one might say this quote to emphasize our connection to the past.
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'.
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
I many no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather response to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not.
The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. βDo they expect students not to be anarchists?β he said. βWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Things themselves don't hurt or hinder us. Things simply are what they are. How we view these things is another matter.People think what they will think; it is of no concern to us.
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