The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the inevitable separation of humanity from Earth, emphasizing a mother's nurturing role and the eventual need to let go.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke personifies Earth as a mother that nurtures her children, humanity, and suggests that the time will come when she must part ways with them. This statement evokes a sense of sadness and inevitability regarding the fate of our planet and the future of humankind, encouraging reflection on our relationship with Earth and the impact of our actions on this home we must ultimately leave.
In practice
During a climate change conference to emphasize the urgency of environmental action.
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'.
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.
George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.
People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots.
If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible.
The whole world is not worth one soul.
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