Earth

The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them ~ Walt Whitman

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System, in both diameter and mass. Home to myriad species including humans, it is also referred to as "the Earth", "Planet Earth", "Gaia", "Terra", and "the World".

Sourced

Alphabetized by author

• The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky.
  • Anaximander, as quoted in "Science Attests the Accuracy of the Bible" in The Watchtower (1 October 1980)

• This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom, — the very fashion of which "passeth away."
  • François Fénelon, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206

• In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies — even our dreams.
  • Neil Gross, in "The earth will don an electronic skin" in BusinessWeek (30 August 1999)

• What have we done to the world, look what we've done
  What about all the peace that that you pledge your only son?
  What about flowering fields, is there a time?
  What about all the dreams that you said were yours and mine?
  Did you ever stop to notice all the children dead from war?
  Did you ever stop to notice the crying Earth, the weeping shores?
  • Michael Jackson, "Earth Song" (1995)

• We are pilgrims, not settlers; this earth is our inn, not our home.
  • John Heyl Vincent, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206

• The crucified planet Earth,
  should it find a voice
  and a sense of irony,
  might now well say
  of our abuse of it,
  "Forgive them, Father,
  They know not what they do."

  The irony would be
  that we know what
  we are doing.

  When the last living thing
  has died on account of us,
  how poetical it would be
  if Earth could say,
  in a voice floating up
  perhaps
  from the floor
  of the Grand Canyon,
  "It is done."
  People did not like it here.

  • Kurt Vonnegut, in A Man Without a Country (2005)

• We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, in A Man Without a Country (2005)

• We’ve done such a rotten job managing our own planet, we should be very careful before trying to manage others.
  • Carl Sagan, in "Watching the World", in Awake! magazine, (8 June 1999)

• The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them
  • Walt Whitman, in "Song of the Open Road (1856), in Leaves of Grass