Arthur C. Clarke - Universe Quotes

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

Arthur C. Clarke
The universe must be full of voices, calling from star to star in a myriad tongues. One day we shall join that cosmic conversation.

Arthur C. Clarke
Every thoughtful man has often asked himself: Is our race the only intelligence in the universe, or are there other, perhaps far higher, forms of life elsewhere? There can be few questions more important than this, for upon its outcome may depend all philosophy — yes, and all religion, too.

Arthur C. Clarke
The choice, as Wells once said, is the Universe-or nothing.... The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close. Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea.

Arthur C. Clarke
The universes... drift like bubbles in the foam upon the River of Time.

Arthur C. Clarke
Even if we never reach the stars by our own efforts, in the millions of years that lie ahead it is almost certain that the stars will come to us. Isolationism is neither a practical policy on the national or cosmic scale. And when the first contact with the outer universe is made, one would like to think that Mankind played an active and not merely a passive role-that we were the discoverers, not the discovered.

Arthur C. Clarke
We will not exhaust the marvels of the physical Universe until we have explored the whole Cosmos - and that prospect is still, to say the least, satisfyingly remote, if indeed it is theoretically possible. We have scarcely begun a voyage of discovery which may never have an end.

Arthur C. Clarke
When the first rocket lands on our satellite, the romantic writers will have lost the Moon, but it will be a small sacrifice, for the Universe will still remain as their playground.

Arthur C. Clarke
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....

Arthur C. Clarke
I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

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

Arthur C. Clarke
The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.

Arthur C. Clarke
I now spend a good part of my day dreaming of times past, present and future. As I try to survive on 15 hours sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams. Being completely wheel-chaired doesn't stop my mind from roaming the universe — on the contrary!

Arthur C. Clarke
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.

Arthur C. Clarke
Many and strange are the universes that drift like bubbles in the foam of the river of time.

Arthur C. Clarke
I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.

Arthur C. Clarke
They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge … no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command … But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young.

Arthur C. Clarke