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'.
War is not in itself a condition so much as the symptom of a condition, that of international anarchy. If we wish to substitute for war the settlement of disputes by justice, we must first substitute for the condition of international anarchy a condition of international order
The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.
The flexibility we gain in asana is the living symbol of the suppleness we gain in relation to lifeβs problems and challenges.
You first parents of the human race...who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.
Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating.
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