How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the dominance of the oceans on our planet, questioning the suitability of the name 'Earth.'
Arthur C. Clarke's quote invites reflection on the profound significance of the oceans in defining our planet. It suggests that the vastness and importance of the oceans should lead us to reconsider our labeling of Earth, highlighting our connection to water and nature rather than just land. This perspective encourages a deeper appreciation of the environmental context in which humanity exists.
In practice
During a lecture on climate change, I used this quote to highlight the importance of protecting our oceans.
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'.
[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread... and a thousand other things of the same kind.
Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.
One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.
If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.
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