Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

Since women are better at producing babies, presumably Nature has given men some talent to compensate. But for the moment I can't think of it.

I've just had an amusing flashback. All these creatures going in the same direction - they look like the commuters who used to surge back and forth twice a day between home and office, before electronics made it unnecessary.

Space is what stops everything from happening in the same place.

And even if Einstein could not be defied, he might be evaded. Those who sponsored this view talked hopefully about shortcuts through higher dimensions, lines that were straighter than straight, and hyperspacial connectivity. They were fond of using an expressive phrase coined by a Princeton mathematician of the last century: "Wormholes in space." Critics who suggested that these ideas were too fantastic to be taken seriously were reminded of Niels Bohr's "Your theory is crazy - but not crazy enough to be true." If

He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity - the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.

Because each of us is the sum of all we have ever experienced.

Science fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish that it could.

Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow - incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No - that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.

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.

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.

The trouble with cliché's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But "love at first sight" is never boring.

Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.

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?

Yet among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question:
"Where do we go from here?

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

The next day the government of South Africa announced that full civil rights would be restored to the white minority.

Perhaps you understand now why that crystal pyramid was set upon the Moon instead of on the
Earth. Its builders were not concerned with races still struggling up from savagery. They would be
interested in our civilization only if we proved our fitness to survive -by crossing space and so
escaping from the Earth, our cradle. That is the challenge that all intelligent races must meet,
sooner or later. It is a double challenge, for it depends in turn upon the conquest of atomic energy
and the last choice between life and death." (do conto The Sentinel)

The thing's hollow - it goes on forever - and - oh my God! - it's full of stars!

Futilitarianism.

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?

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

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.

I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tom hated to admit defeat, even in matters far less important than this. He believed that all problems could be solved if they were tackled in the right way, with the right equipment. This was a challenge to his scientific ingenuity; the fact that there were many lives involved was immaterial. Dr. Tom Lawson had no great use for human beings, but he did respect the Universe. This was a private fight between him and It.

Often we had no choice: we couldn't reform the whole world. And didn't somebody once say 'Politics is the art of the possible'?" "Quite true - which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.

This was the fundamental problem with rockets - and no one had ever discovered any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a mission; it squared it.

Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir ... Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

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

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Can you sum up your ideas in less than - oh, a thousand bits?

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

The eruption had hurled the thing out of its normal environment, deep down in the flaming atmosphere of the sun. It was a miracle that it had survived its journey through space; already it must be dying, as the forces that controlled its huge, invisible body lost their hold over the electrified gas which was the only substance it possessed.

The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life - much less intelligence - beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime

The outermost - Jupiter XXVII - moved backwards in an unstable path nineteen million miles from its temporary master. It was the prize in a perpetual tug-of-war between Jupiter and the Sun, for the planet was constantly capturing short-lived moons from the asteroid belt, and losing them again after a few million years. Only the inner satellites were its permanent property; the Sun could never wrest them from its grasp.

There were, however, a few exceptions.
One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent.

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.

All bureaucracies are the same. They drain the life out of the truly creative people and develop mindless paper-pushers as their critical mass.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites. It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

Seems like it," answered Bowman. "The unit checks out perfectly. Even under two hundred percent overload, there's no fault prediction indicated." The two men were standing in the tiny workshop-cum-lab in the carrousel, which was more convenient than the space-pod garage for minor repairs and examinations. There was no danger, here, of meeting blobs of hot solder drifting down the breeze, or of completely losing small items of equipment that had decided to go into orbit. Such things could - and did - happen in

He had a suspicion of plausible answers; they were so often wrong.

years they had known less about it than

Attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as trying to define pornography ... In both pornography and SF, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.

Curnow had once remarked that Dr. Chandra had the sort of physique that could only be achieved by centuries of starvation.

Whatever their origin, the human race was fortunate to have seen such a wonder; it could exist for only a brief moment of time in the history of the Solar System.

I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.

Can the synthesis of man and machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded?

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

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

For there was no vessel - at least of Man's making - anywhere between her and the infinitely distant stars.

Jean was definitely the girl who mattered, despite her queer ideas and queerer friends. He had no intention of totally abandoning Naomi or Joy or Elsa or - what was her name? - Denise; but the time had come for something more permanent.

Mystery was piling upon mystery, and that for all his efforts he was getting further and further from any understanding of the truths he sought.

As to the nature of that drive, one thing was now certain, even though all else was mystery. There were no jets of gas, no beams of ions or plasma thrusting Rama into its new orbit. No one put it better than Sergeant Professor Myron, when he said, in shocked

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.

Only small minds are impressed by large numbers.

And Stormgren hoped that when Karellen was free to walk once more on Earth, he would one day come to these northern forests, and stand beside the grave of the first man to be his friend.

So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.

The information age has been driven and dominated by technopreneurs. We now have to apply these technologies in saving lives, improving livelihoods and lifting millions of people out of squalor, misery and suffering. In other words, our focus must now move from the geeks to the meek.

The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas, 1968, became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.

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.

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.

We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

Miss Pringle was not much larger than the handheld personal assistants of his own age, and usually lived, like the Old West's Colt 45, in a quick-draw holster at his waist.

Chemistry is a trade for people without enough imagination to be physicists.

Beyond gravity, some of that freedom was regained; with the loss of weight went many of the cares and worries of Earth. Heywood

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 ...

I said nothing about men adapting themselves to Mars. Have you ever considered the possibility of Mars meeting us half-way?

No group can survive, let alone thrive, unless what is good for the overall community is more important than individual freedom. Take, for example, resource allocation. How can anyone with any intelligence possibly justify, in terms of the overall community, the accumulation and hoarding of enormous material assets by a few individuals when others do not even have food, clothing, and other essentials?" In

I believe any malevolent supercivilisation would have rapidly self-destructed as we may be in the process of doing ourselves. If we do have contact, physical contact with aliens, I think it will be benign.

The phenomenon of UFO doesn't say anything about the presence of intelligence in space. It just shows how rare it is here on the earth.

In the long run, there are no secrets. in science. The universe will not cooperate in a cover-up.

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence - or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.

The timeless instant passed.

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.

There could be no ghosts upon a world that had never known life.

Using material ferried up by rockets, it would be possible to construct a "space station" in ... orbit. The station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by a regular rocket service. (1945)

And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.

They found it hard to imagine the smog-choked cities of the Twentieth Century, and the waste, greed, and appalling environmental disasters of the Oil Age.

There's an ancient philosophical joke that's much subtler than it seems. Question: Why is the Universe here? Answer: Where else would it be?

Rendezvous with Rama Arthur C. Clarke

No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time.

If he was indeed mad, his delusions were beautifully organized.

Nicole's intuition told her not to follow the fireflies, but she said nothing.

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

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.

One's first existence was a precious gift which would never be repeated.

I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development. I think that religion may be some random by-product of mammalian reproduction. If that's true, would non-mammalian aliens have a religion?

For Jan was still suffering from the romantic illusion–the cause of so much misery and so much poetry–that every man has only one real love in his life.

Much of the colony's musical experimenting was, quite consciously, concerned with what might be called "time span." What was the briefest note that the mind could grasp - or the longest that it could tolerate without boredom? Could the result be varied by conditioning or by the use of appropriate orchestration? Such problems were discussed endlessly, and the arguments were not purely academic. They had resulted in some extremely interesting compositions. But it was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography - much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines.

Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion.

But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment.

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

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.

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.

One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.

Bowman could bear no more. He jerked out the last unit, and Hal was silent forever.

Atheism is unprovable, so uninteresting. However unlikely it is, we can never be certain that God once existed - and has now shot off to infinity, where no one can ever find him ... Like Gautama Buddha, I take no position on this subject.

Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.