If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence.
Interpretation
Man's creations, like cannonballs, are a testament to human ingenuity, while the stars and planets signify the larger forces of nature.
This quote by Jules Verne highlights the contrast between the natural universe, created by Providence, and the artificial objects crafted by humanity. It suggests that while the cosmos is a product of divine creation, human beings have utilized their intellect and creativity to design technology and weaponry, illustrating both our potential and our flaws.
In practice
In a speech about technological advancement, one might say, 'If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence' to illustrate human innovation.
Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world.
It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.
Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word 'impossible' is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.
However strong, however imposing a ship may appear, it is not 'disgraced' because it flies before the tempest. A commander ought always to remember that a man's life is worth more than the mere satisfaction of his own pride. In any case, to be obstinate is blameable, and to be wilful is dangerous.
The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
The reality is the majority of us will not get off this planet. So the long run is, some kind of space exploration has to benefit us here on Earth.
The essence of mathematics lies precisely in its freedom.
If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is.
By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.
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