Top 100 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

#1. The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #36423
#2. It was difficult not to think of the Central Computer as a living entity, localised in a single spot, though actually it was the sum total of all the machines in Diaspar.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #42649
#3. But the characteristic that is truly special about our species ... [is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme ...

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #82707
#4. There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #86026
#5. Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #116550
#6. And as for the Council - tell it that a road that has once been opened cannot be closed again merely by passing a resolution.' The

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #124175
#7. My God
it's full of stars!

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #190787
#8. Rendezvous with Rama Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #191445
#9. Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #192403
#10. Beyond gravity, some of that freedom was regained; with the loss of weight went many of the cares and worries of Earth. Heywood

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #192465
#11. As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #198868
#12. Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly closed, recycling all food, air, and other expendables. But, of course, that's just how the Earth operates - on a slightly larger scale.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #224936
#13. The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well stocked mind is safe from boredom.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #262617
#14. Those meaningless and unanswerable questions the minds keep returning to, like a tongue exploring a broken tooth.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #287549
#15. Only Time is universal; Night and Day are merely quaint local customs found on those planets that tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #309649
#16. My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.
[Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #311790
#17. No trilogy should have more than four books.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #316778
#18. Ten kilometers away, the lights of New York glowed on the skyline like a dawn frozen in the act of breaking.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #322896
#19. What are you doing, Dave?

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #352777
#20. It was an accident - that had killed Frank Poole.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #355565
#21. Children grow fast in this low gravity. But they don't age so quickly - they'll live longer than we do. Floyd stared in fascination at the self-assured little lady, noting the graceful carriage and the unusually delicate bone structure.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #356984
#22. (One day, somebody had predicted, Earth would have a ring like Saturn's, composed entirely of lost bolts, fasteners, and even tools that had escaped from careless orbital construction workers.)

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #366121
#23. Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #423572
#24. The newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #426889
#25. There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in Childhood's End. But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #466426
#26. But in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #472527
#27. like all material things, they were not immune to the corruptions of Time and its patient, unsleeping servant, Entropy.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #564514
#28. ..the happy hum of humanity.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #590665
#29. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #631029
#30. Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #637127
#31. Science fiction could now be made far more convincing by science fact.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #719102
#32. In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best
science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction
writer.
[dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #743171
#33. Bose was slightly less happy about the presence of Conrad Taylor, the celebrated anthropologist, who had made his reputation by uniquely combining scholarship and eroticism in his study of puberty rites in late-twentieth-century Beverly Hills.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #780933
#34. People go through four stages before any revolutionary development: 1. It's nonsense, don't waste my time. 2. It's interesting, but not important. 3. I always said it was a good idea. 4. I thought of it first.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #804042
#35. Although Lucifer had accelerated the process, it has begun decades earlier, when the coming of the jet age had triggered and explosion of global tourism

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #804423
#36. The recipe for a long, happy life:
consult with old philosophers and young doctors,
consort with old friends and young women.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #805719
#37. an expressive phrase coined by a Princeton mathematician of the last century: "Wormholes in space.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #806992
#38. In Brohier's eyes, violence was not merely the last refuge of the incompetent. It was the gloating revenge of the sore loser.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #824978
#39. He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #833763
#40. A gentle tickling on Floyd's wrist announced an incoming call.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #836340
#41. Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #839716
#42. I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #844276
#43. Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar's chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This,

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #846209
#44. Stormgren had walked to his desk and was fidgeting with his famous uranium paperweight. He was not nervous - merely undecided.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #847019
#45. All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #856191
#46. Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #880490
#47. The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #882204
#48. I will not be afraid because I understand ... And understanding is happiness.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #882620
#49. No one worried except a few philosophers. The race was too intent upon savoring its new-found freedom to look beyond the pleasures of the present. Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias - boredom. Perhaps

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #940670
#50. Much had been lost during the centuries, for men seldom bother to preserve the commonplace articles of everyday life.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #955610
#51. I don't believe all this just happened," Nicole said. "Not on another planet. Not anywhere. Natural evolution simply does not result in the kind of interspecies harmony we have witnessed the last two days.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #975394
#52. Yet if there were no hazards there would be no achievement, no sense of adventure.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #989360
#53. he suffered from an incurable malady which, it seemed, attacked only homo sapiens among all the intelligent races of the universe. That disease was religious mania. Throughout

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #999542
#54. Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1029528
#55. Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1040727
#56. who is better off, the child with a mentor who knows and tells everything or the one whose teacher helps the child find her own answers?

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1041610
#57. The timeless instant passed.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1075877
#58. Hello, Dave," said Hal presently. "Have you found the trouble?" This

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1080959
#59. Nevertheless, when you did not know what you were looking for, it was important to avoid all prejudices and preconceptions; something that at first sight seemed irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to be a vital clue.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1081197
#60. I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1091418
#61. A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible-indeed, inevitable-the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1097495
#62. Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1128455
#63. Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1145542
#64. He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1154962
#65. Space is what stops everything from happening in the same place.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1184104
#66. The history of the Universe must be a mass of such disconnected threads, and no one could say which were important and which were trivial.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1185916
#67. Discovery was no longer a happy ship.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1198694
#68. Civilization will reach maturity only when it learns to value diversity of character and of ideas.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1240389
#69. A feeling of foreboding, and, indeed, of physical as well as psychological discomfort, had come over him. He suddenly recalled - and this did nothing at all to help - a phrase he had once come across: Someone is walking over your grave.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1280220
#70. Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1301336
#71. Do you believe in ghosts, Dim?" "Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I'm afraid of them. Why do you ask?

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1303402
#72. It is vital to remember that information
in the sense of raw data
is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1309620
#73. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered;

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1317499
#74. At this point, there flashed briefly through Stenton's horrified mind the memory of that timeless classic, H. G. Wells's "The Star." He had first read it as a small boy, and it had helped to spark his interest in astronomy.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1320928
#75. Ladies and gentlemen, those flames from the port engines are perfectly normal. The stewardess will be coming around in a moment to serve coffee, tea, or milk. I'm sorry we don't have anything stronger on this flight - regulations don't permit it.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1361242
#76. Could one make up for lack of moral courage by proving physical bravery?

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1382378
#77. Even by the twenty-second century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1391603
#78. The only way to define your limits is by going beyond them.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1397821
#79. He happy hum of humanity.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1404319
#80. Hal remained a low-grade moron.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1405635
#81. I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer Production Number 3. I became operational at the Hal Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1426496
#82. The core of Jupiter, forever beyond human reach, was a diamond as big as the Earth.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1438620
#83. They were not in the least deterred when a celebrated Washington humorist claimed that his calculations proved that the world ended on December 31, 1999 - but that everyone had had too much of a hangover to notice.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1482370
#84. Now I understand," said the last man.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1512305
#85. Evolution and science had come to the same answers; and the work of Nature had lasted longer. At

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1549903
#86. And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1556918
#87. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1565435
#88. For there was no vessel - at least of Man's making - anywhere between her and the infinitely distant stars.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1578653
#89. Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1585330
#90. President of the Society for Creative Anachronisms.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1587531
#91. There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1650871
#92. Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1665866
#93. The Lassans were insatiably inquisitive, and the concept of privacy was almost unknown to them. A Please Do Not Disturb sign was often regarded as a personal challenge, which led to interesting complications ...

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1688625
#94. The Dean's complaining to his Faculty. Why do you scientists need such expensive equipment? Why can't you be like the Math Department, which only needs a blackboard and a wastepaper basket? Better still, like the Department of Philosophy. That doesn't even need a wastepaper basket ...

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1697746
#95. He had a suspicion of plausible answers; they were so often wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1704102
#96. Cassini - who discovered Japetus in 1671 - also observed that it was six times brighter on one side of its orbit than the other.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1744434
#97. He wanted to close his eyes and shut out the pearly nothingness that surrounded him, but that was an act of a coward and he would not yield to it.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1757942
#98. Guns are the crutches of the impotent.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1794464
#99. It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1803197
#100. For if not true, they are well imagined...

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke Quotes #1845394

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