Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.

…once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…

Once, I believed that space couldhave no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’shandwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled.

Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.""Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.

In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again.

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

1. 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.2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.

But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man only at the end of a long and busy life, he sat before the keyboard and filled the air with his beloved Bach. Perhaps he was deceiving himself, perhaps this was some merciful trick of the mind but now it seemed to Jan that this what he had always wished to do. His secret ambition had at last dared to emerge into the full light of consciousness. Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world.

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.

...a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.

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.

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.

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.

He had sometimes wondered if the real reason why men sought danger was that only thus could they find the companionship and solidarity which they unconsciously craved.

The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory.