All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.
Interpretation
Human plans are often disrupted by forces beyond our control, such as nature or fate.
This quote by Arthur C. Clarke highlights the unpredictability of life and the limitations of human agency. Despite our best efforts to plan and organize our lives, we must acknowledge that there are greater forces at play that can alter our course unexpectedly, reminding us to remain adaptable and open to change.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a discussion about unexpected life changes.
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'.
From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:_x000D_ _x000D_ WAR IS PEACE_x000D_ _x000D_ FREEDOM IS SLAVERY_x000D_ _x000D_ IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
The task is to investigate speech sounds in relation to the meanings with which they are invested, i.e., sounds viewed as signifiers, and above all to throw light on the structure of the relation between sounds and meaning.
It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
All of a Christian's life is one of repentance.
There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.
There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually.
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