Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

217 Sourced Quotes

I'm sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I've had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter and science populariser. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer — one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.

Arthur C. Clarke
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.

Arthur C. Clarke
There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped toward new ends.

Arthur C. Clarke
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke
I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.

Arthur C. Clarke
I will not be afraid because I understand... And understanding is happiness.

Arthur C. Clarke
The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.

Arthur C. Clarke
SETI is probably the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.

Arthur C. Clarke
Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

Arthur C. Clarke
Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

Arthur C. Clarke
The hypothesis you refer to as God, though not disprovable by logic alone, is unnecessary for the following reason.
If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of organization than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress. William of Ockham pointed out as recently as your fourteenth century that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. I cannot therefore understand why this debate continues.

Arthur C. Clarke
What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of view.

Arthur C. Clarke
I am afraid that this chapter will amply demonstrate the truth of Clarke's 69th Law, viz., "Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software." In both cases the cure is simple though usually very expensive.

Arthur C. Clarke
Maybe those nihilist philosophers are right; maybe this is all we can expect of the universe, a relentless crushing of life and spirit, because the equilibrium state of the cosmos is death...

Arthur C. Clarke
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.

Arthur C. Clarke
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
When the pioneers and adventurers of our past left their homes in search of new lands, they said good-bye forever to the place of their birth and the companions of their youth. Only a lifetime ago, parents waved farewell to their emigrating children in the virtual certainty that they would never meet again.
And now, within one incredible generation, all this has changed.

Arthur C. Clarke
There was no substitute for reality; one should be aware of imitations.

Arthur C. Clarke
Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations.
I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we've learnt something from the most barbaric century in history — the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation…

Arthur C. Clarke
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
All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.

Arthur C. Clarke
To find anything comparable with our forthcoming ventures into space, we must go back far beyond Columbus, far beyond Odysseus-far, indeed, beyond the first ape-man. We must contemplate the moment, now irrevocably lost in the mists of time, when the ancestor off all of us came crawling out of the sea.

Arthur C. Clarke
When one has to ask, "Am I really in love?" the answer is always "No".

Arthur C. Clarke
We do not have to wait until someone produces "antigravity" before we can travel to the planets: the means is already at hand. It is the rocket.

Arthur C. Clarke
Perhaps one day men will no longer be interested in the unknown, no longer tantalized by mystery. This is possible, but when Man loses his curiosity one feels he will have lost most of the other things that make him human.

Arthur C. Clarke
Through all the ages, man has fought against two great enemies — time and space. Time he may never wholly conquer, and the sheer immensity of space may also defeat him when he has ventured more than a few light-years from the Sun. Yet on this little Earth, at least, he may one day claim a final victory.

Arthur C. Clarke
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
It has often been said — and though it is becoming platitudinous it is nonetheless true — that only through space-flight can mankind find a permanent outlet for its aggressive and pioneering instincts. The desire to reach the planets is only an extension of the desire to see what is over the next hill.

Arthur C. Clarke
Faiths come and go, but Truth abides. Out there among the stars lie such truths as we may understand, whether we learn them by our own efforts, or from the strange teachers who are waiting for us along the infinite road on which our feet are now irrevocably set.

Arthur C. Clarke
When we meet our peers among the stars, we need have nothing to fear save our own shortcomings.

Arthur C. Clarke