Earth - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

This planet doesn't need new continents, it needs new men.

- Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), translated by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter (1993)

For what should we thank the humans of three thousand years ago? For exhausting the coal supplies of the world? For leaving us no petroleum for our chemical factories? For destroying the forests on whole mountain ranges and letting the soil erode into the valleys?

- Laurence Manning, ''The ManWho Awoke'' (1933)

I pray for one last landing On the globe that gave me birth; Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth. Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me As they rove around the girth Of our lovely mother planet, Of the cool, green hills of Earth. We've tried each spinning space mote And reckoned its trueworth: Take us back again to the homes of men On the cool, green hills of Earth. The arching sky is calling Spacemen back to their trade. All hands! Stand by! Free falling! And the lights below us fade. Out ride the sons of Terra, Far drives the thundering jet, Up leaps the race of Earthmen Out, far, and onward yet - We pray for one last lasting On the globe that gave us birth; Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth.

- Robert A. Heinlein, ''The Green Hills of Earth'' (1947)

Earth hung in the after port behind and below him, a soft emerald crescent in its first thin quarter. A warm green sickle that was home, a hustling verdant young world impatient to push its way across black empty space and satisfy its lusty curiosity about its cosmic neighbors.

- Roger Dee, ''Unwelcome Tenant'' (1950)

There were more beautiful planets in the Galaxy's swarming myriads - the indigo world-ocean of Loa, jeweled with islands; the heaven-defying mountains of Sharang; the sky of Jareb, that seemed to drip light - oh, many and many, but there was only one Earth.

- Poul Anderson, ''The Chapter Ends'' (1954)

Earth - it was a place where you could stop being afraid, a place where fear of suffocation was not, where fear of blowout was not, where nobody went berserk with the chokers or dreamed of poisoned air or worried about shorthorn cancer or burn blindness or meteorite dust or low-gravity muscular atrophy. A place where there was wind to blow your sweat away.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., ''The Lineman'' (1957)

The biggest developments of the immediate future will take place, not on the Moon or Mars, but on Earth, and it is inner space, not outer, that needs to be explored. The only truly alien planet is Earth.

- J. G. Ballard, ''WhichWay to Inner Space?'' (1962)

He'd congratulated himself on escaping all the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man.

- Clifford D. Simak, ''All the Traps of Earth'' (1960)

All my life I've wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course - just to see it. As everybody knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly suited for human habitation.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Podkayne of Mars: Her Life and Times (1963)

The earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive.

- Damon Knight, ''Masks'' (1968)

[On Earth:] ''A peaceful world, certainly,'' said Zinin. ''Rather light on the oxygen and argon, and all that nitrogen gives it a bit of odor, but on the whole a most pleasant ball of dirt.'' - Alan Dean Foster, ''With Friends Like These'' (1971)

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan (1971)

Yours is a huge world. Only men stultified by impatience or indifference believe it to be small. Only the pitiably ignorant believe it has been explored.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''Mount Charity'' (1971)

She floated there in the great nothing, still warm and soft and blue-green if you could eyeball her from a few thousand miles out, still kissed under blankets of clouds. Mama Earth. Getting old now, tired, her blankets soiled with her own secretions, her body bruised and torn by a billion forgotten passions. Like many a mother before her, she had given birth to a monster. [. . .] Man. Big Daddy of the primates. The ape that walks like a chicken.

- Chad Oliver, ''King of the Hill'' (1972)

In 1979, America staged the Big Space Fuck, which was a serious effort to make sure that human life would continue to exist somewhere in the Universe, since it certainly couldn't continue much longer on Earth. Everything had turned to shit and beer cans and old automobiles and Clorox bottles.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., ''The Big Space Fuck'' (1972)

Mother Earth. She lived, this world of trees and rivers and rocks with deep stone thoughts. She breathed, had feelings, dreamed dreams, gave birth, laughed and grew contemplative for millennia. This great creature swimming in the sea of space.

- Harlan Ellison, ''The Deathbird'' (1973)

Earth really messes some people up.

- Howard Waldrop, ''My Sweet Lady Jo'' (1974)

The earth pulled him down, tugging at him like a burdensome friend.

- George Zebrowski, Macrolife (1979)

He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow-hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe.

- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1985)

Things are always going to be falling apart on Earth, you might as well get used to it.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species.

- Richard Preston, The Hot Zone (1994)

Beware the gifts of Earth.

- Philip C. Jennings, ''The Road to Reality'' (1996)