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The Earth does not want new continents, but new men.

— Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Ce ne sont pas de nouveaux continents qu'il faut à la terre, mais de nouveaux hommes!

Original text (French)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Part I, ch. XVIII: Vanikoro (Boston: Geo. M. Smith & Co., 1873, p. 101) (Ch. XIX in the French text) | Tr. Walter James Miller (1966)

Variants

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

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What good would it be to discuss such a proposition, when force could destroy the best arguments?

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An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.

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Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

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Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jules Verne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.