Top 100 Arthur C Clarke Quotes
#2. I like science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick and Vonnegut, and I really like Margaret Atwood, 'The Handmaid's Tale.' And you know, so much of science fiction has to do with predicting what's to come, so I think that's really interesting.
Conor Oberst
#3. What an odd thing it is to see an entire species
billions of people
playing with, listening to meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call 'music.' (
The Overlords, from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End)
Oliver Sacks
#4. 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
#5. Margaret Atwood, J.G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, Jim Crace, Arthur C. Clarke, Russell Hoban, Anna Kavan, Doris Lessing, Cormac McCarthy, Walter M. Miller, Tim O'Brien, Will Self and Marcel Theroux,
Bill Bryson
#6. I loved literary science fiction. In fact, as a kid, when I was reading science fiction, I thought 'I can't wait for the future when the special effects are good' to represent what was in these books by Arthur C. Clarke, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Jack Vance.
Matt Groening
#7. In the words of futurist Arthur C. Clarke, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Dan Brown
#8. There is a sort of genre of optimistic science fiction that I like, and I don't think there is enough of. One of my favourites is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 'The City and the Stars.' It's set in this far future on Earth in this somewhat static society and trying to break out.
Peter Thiel
#9. Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity? Arthur C. Clarke, author
George Washington
#10. Don't forget, as you enjoy your mild spring days and peaceful summer evenings, how lucky you are to live in the temperate region of the Solar System, where the air never freezes and the rocks never melt ... Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
#11. Let us say that you might have become a telepathic cancer, a malignant mentality which in its inevitable dissolution would have poisoned other and greater minds.
Arthur C. Clarke
#12. One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.
Arthur C. Clarke
#13. Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion.
Arthur C. Clarke
#14. Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy
of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
Arthur C. Clarke
#15. In the long run, there are no secrets. in science. The universe will not cooperate in a cover-up.
Arthur C. Clarke
#16. Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became unbearably dull.
Arthur C. Clarke
#18. Do we use models to help us find the truth? Or do we know the truth first, and then develop the mathematics to explain it?
Arthur C. Clarke
#19. The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
Arthur C. Clarke
#20. 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
#21. Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked-are in fact very precised adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the only kind of Universe that makes our existence possible.
Arthur C. Clarke
#22. 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
#23. In all the universe there is nothing more precious than mind.
Arthur C. Clarke
#24. Hal's internal fault predictor could have made a mistake." "It's more
Arthur C. Clarke
#25. Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?
Arthur C. Clarke
#26. Myron, like countless NCO's before him, had discovered the ideal compromise between power and responsibility.
Arthur C. Clarke
#27. However much the universe and its mysteries might call him, this was where he was born and where he belonged. It would never satisfy him, yet always he would return. He had gone half-way across the Galaxy to learn this simple truth.
Arthur C. Clarke
#28. Personally, I refuse to drive a car - I won't have anything to do with any kind of transportation in which I can't read.
Arthur C. Clarke
#30. I thought this couldn't happen in astronomy. Isn't celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.
Arthur C. Clarke
#31. 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
#32. 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
#34. Because Nature always balances her books, the Sun lost some velocity in the transaction; but the effect would not be measurable for a few thousand years.
Arthur C. Clarke
#35. How I envy them," said Colonel Jones. "Sometimes it's quite a relief to have something trivial to worry about.
Arthur C. Clarke
#36. Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.
Arthur C. Clarke
#37. It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings.
Alan Bishop
Arthur C. Clarke
#38. They both knew, of course, that Hal was hearing every word,
Arthur C. Clarke
#39. 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
#40. My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents ...
Arthur C. Clarke
#41. There was awe, and there was also incredulity - sheer disbelief that the dead Moon, of all worlds, could have sprung this fantastic surprise.
Arthur C. Clarke
#43. Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it himself.
Arthur C. Clarke
#44. Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.
Arthur C. Clarke
#46. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.
Arthur C. Clarke
#47. all that he had ever been, at every moment of his life, was being transferred to safer keeping. Even as one David Bowman ceased to exist, another became immortal.
Arthur C. Clarke
#48. It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
Arthur C. Clarke
#49. Could we go into your room?" she asked. "I knew it. I knew it," he said, spinning around and sliding quickly toward his door. "It's finally happend, just like in dreams. An intelligent, beautiful woman is going to declare her undying affection
Arthur C. Clarke
#50. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
#52. What is becoming more interesting than the myths themselves has been the study of how the myths were constructed from sparse or unpromising facts indeed, sometimes from no facts in a kind of mute conspiracy of longing, very rarely under anybody's conscious control.
Arthur C. Clarke
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there.
Arthur C. Clarke
#56. Imagine that every man's mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock from which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but the individuality would have gone
Arthur C. Clarke
#57. And as for you, Paul, I assured him that you could keep a secret for up to six days without apoplexy.
Arthur C. Clarke
#58. A major part of his job was deciding when warnings could be ignored, when they could be dealt with at leisure - and when they had to be treated as real emergencies. If he paid equal attention to all the ship's cries for help, he would never get anything done. He
Arthur C. Clarke
#59. If there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they can't be very important gods.
Arthur C. Clarke
#60. 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
#61. Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
#62. Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.
Arthur C. Clarke
#64. I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.
Arthur C. Clarke
#65. Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?
Arthur C. Clarke
#67. Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.
Arthur C. Clarke
#68. Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time.
Arthur C. Clarke
#69. No single individual, however eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years.
Arthur C. Clarke
#70. The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars ... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.
Arthur C. Clarke
#71. Almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity.
Arthur C. Clarke
#72. Forty-one was a very special number, the initial integer in the longest continuous string of quadratic primes.
Arthur C. Clarke
#73. The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
#74. The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.
Arthur C. Clarke
#75. 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
#76. The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing.
Arthur C. Clarke
#77. Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth.
Arthur C. Clarke
#78. Those meaningless and unanswerable questions the minds keep returning to, like a tongue exploring a broken tooth.
Arthur C. Clarke
#79. But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.
Arthur C. Clarke
#80. he filled to perfection the classic recipe for a small boy: "a noise surrounded by dirt.
Arthur C. Clarke
#81. He felt confident that when he pulled open the drawer of that desk, he would find a Gideon Bible inside it ... .
Arthur C. Clarke
#82. What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of view.
Arthur C. Clarke
#83. There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he had.
Arthur C. Clarke
#84. 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
#86. My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.
[Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]
Arthur C. Clarke
#87. The West needs to relearn what the rest of the world has never forgotten - that there is nothing sinful in leisure as long as it does not degenerate into mere sloth.
Arthur C. Clarke
#89. If one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
#90. Ten kilometers away, the lights of New York glowed on the skyline like a dawn frozen in the act of breaking.
Arthur C. Clarke
#91. First rule of government of the people, by the people, for the people: Never tell the people!
Arthur C. Clarke
#95. What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
Arthur C. Clarke
#96. 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
#98. (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
#100. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
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