Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

And yet, even while they baffled him, they aroused within his heart a feeling he had never known bef...

Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal wh...

The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind o...

Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any v...

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

This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To...

Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perh...

Feeling extremely foolish, the acting representative of Homo sapiens watched his First Contact strid...

The Chairman glared across three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers of space at Conrad Taylor, w...

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame...

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

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'M...

If man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.

One thing seems certain. Our galaxy is now in the brief springtime of its life—a springtime made glo...

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

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

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the i...

The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundatio...

And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsi...

There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. Bu...

In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-bestscience writer dedicates th...

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

What is human memory?" Manning asked. He gazed at the air as he spoke, as if lecturing an invisible ...

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not ...

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the f...

Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, ...

Let us say that you might have become a telepathic cancer, a malignant mentality which in its inevit...

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in...

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since ...

There were, however, a few exceptions.One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly dr...

Imagine that every man’s mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality...

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

…mysticism –perhaps the main aberration of the human mind.

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

Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinf...

That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For ...

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonst...

He had sometimes wondered if the real reason why men sought danger was that only thus could they fin...

After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization.

Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological

Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its ki...

Didn’t somebody once say ‘Politics is the art of the possible’?” “Quite true—which is why only secon...

Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelli

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits ...

He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could ...

Humor was the enemy of desire.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabi...

Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept...

Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with simil...

After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---...

Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravi...

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to h...

. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diff...

He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his unde...

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

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

The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, a...

Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in se...

Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anyth...

This is only a work of fiction , The Truth as always will be far stranger

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certai...

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.

Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world.

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

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

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

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly ri...

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

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

But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man only at the end of a...

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind ...

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroo...

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give u...

In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not ...

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.

..the happy hum of humanity.

There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attain...

Slowly, Jimmy held up his outstretched hands. Men had been arguing for two hundred years about this ...

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen ...

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

(...)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system. With his own eyes,...

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

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.""Two possibilities exist: Eith...

Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the ...

Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He wo...

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly...

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrify...

Once, I believed that space couldhave no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared t...

Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” - John W. C...

[T]hese leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way refle...

But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world...

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

It is hard to draw any line between compassion and love.

For the last century, almost all top political appointments [on the planet Earth] had been made by r...