The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that religion has distorted true morality throughout history.
Arthur C. Clarke's quote reflects on the intricate relationship between morality and religion, proposing that the latter has often misappropriated or distorted moral principles. This perspective invites a critical examination of how religious beliefs can influence human ethical standards, potentially leading to conflicts and misunderstandings in society.
In practice
During a debate on moral values in a community forum, one might cite this quote to provoke thought on the influence of religion on ethics.
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'.
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.
In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.
On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu._x000D_ _x000D_ Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
The great soul of power extends far beyond states, to every domain of life, from families to international affairs. And throughout, every form of authority and domination bears a severe burden of proof. It is not self-legitimizing. And when it cannot bear the burden, as is commonly the case, it should be dismantled.
I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.
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