Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the vast number of deceased individuals compared to those currently living, suggesting a collective presence of history.
Arthur C. Clarke's quote emphasizes the idea that for every person alive today, there are many who have lived before them, underscoring the weight of history and the generations that have come before us. It invites reflection on the legacy, wisdom, and experiences of those who have passed, reminding us that each living person is a product of their ancestors and the society shaped by them.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of historical awareness, one might say this quote to emphasize our connection to the past.
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'.
I believe in a world where there are no heroes, and I've read and know humanity a lot. There are moments that I admire in a person courage, intellect, hard work. These are the qualities I admire in an intellectual, in a writer, and there are so many people who have these things.
We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.
I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living - the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals.
The greatest good that can come to anyone is forming within them an absolute certainty of themselves, and of their relationship to the Universe, forever removing the sense of heaven as being outside of them.
History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion, from its usefulness to the public; the advantage of a religious character among private persons; the mischiefs of superstition, and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.
Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.
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