Arthur C. Clarke Quotes & Sayings

If there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they can't be very important gods. — Arthur C. Clarke

The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools. — 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

Our own grandchildren may demonstrate that-sometimes- Gigantic is Beautiful. — Arthur C. Clarke

like all material things, they were not immune to the corruptions of Time and its patient, unsleeping servant, Entropy. — Arthur C. Clarke

Even after a lifetime, one never grew wholly accustomed to the complete absence of time-lag when an information machine replied to an ordinary question. There were people who knew - or claimed to know - how it was done, and talked learnedly of 'access time' and 'storage space', but that made the final result none the less marvellous. Any question of a purely factual nature, within the city's truly enormous range of available information, could be answered immediately. — Arthur C. Clarke

years they had known less about it than — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

Almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

President of the Society for Creative Anachronisms. — Arthur C. Clarke

The newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. — Arthur C. Clarke

He lifted the telephone receiver and pressed it against the plastic of his helmet. If there had been a dialing sound he could have heard it through the conducting material. But, as he had expected, there was only silence. So - it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was clearly not intended to deceive but rather - he hoped - to reassure. That was a very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not remove his suit until he had completed his voyage of exploration. — 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

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes. — Arthur C. Clarke

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility. — Arthur C. Clarke

The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion. — Arthur C. Clarke

It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the sky should be so hard. — Arthur C. Clarke

Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future. — Arthur C. Clarke

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

How I envy them," said Colonel Jones. "Sometimes it's quite a relief to have something trivial to worry about. — Arthur C. Clarke

(One day, somebody had predicted, Earth would have a ring like Saturn's, composed entirely of lost bolts, fasteners, and even tools that had escaped from careless orbital construction workers.) — Arthur C. Clarke

But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; — Arthur C. Clarke

There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform. — Arthur C. Clarke

Man's beliefs were his own affair, so long as they did not interfere with the liberty of others. — Arthur C. Clarke

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 — Arthur C. Clarke

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? — Arthur C. Clarke

Ladies and gentlemen, those flames from the port engines are perfectly normal. The stewardess will be coming around in a moment to serve coffee, tea, or milk. I'm sorry we don't have anything stronger on this flight - regulations don't permit it. — Arthur C. Clarke

Personally, I refuse to drive a car - I won't have anything to do with any kind of transportation in which I can't read. — Arthur C. Clarke

One hemisphere was a giant bull's-eye, a series of concentric rings where solid rock had once flowed in kilometer-high ripples under some ancient hammer blow from space. — Arthur C. Clarke

I want to be remembered most as a writer - one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well. — Arthur C. Clarke

dying in an exciting situation is much better than living in a boring one. — Arthur C. Clarke

Ten kilometers away, the lights of New York glowed on the skyline like a dawn frozen in the act of breaking. — Arthur C. Clarke

One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. — Arthur C. Clarke

Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem? — Arthur C. Clarke

When the Sun shrinks to a dull red dwarf, it will not be dying. It will just be starting to live and everything that has gone before will merely be a prelude to its real history. — Arthur C. Clarke

She was certain that it was wise to prevent Wilson and Brown from working closely together during sorties inside Rama. Nicole chastised herself for not having raised the issue with Borzov on her own. She realized that her mission portfolio included mental health as well, but somehow she had difficulty thinking of herself as the crew psychiatrist. I avoid it because it's not an objective process, she thought. We have no sensors yet to measure good or bad mental health. — Arthur C. Clarke

Only Time is universal; Night and Day are merely quaint local customs found on those planets that tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation. — Arthur C. Clarke

The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

Sometimes a decision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to enforce it. That's why you need a captain. You can't run a ship by a committee - at least not all the time. — Arthur C. Clarke

Adamski's Disease. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

throughout the flight, but there — Arthur C. Clarke

it's only by not taking the human race seriously that I retain what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess! — Arthur C. Clarke

In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best
science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction
writer.
[dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three] — Arthur C. Clarke

Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes. — Arthur C. Clarke

Apart from the jet-black sky, the photo might have been taken almost anywhere in the polar regions of Earth; there was nothing in the least alien about the sea of wrinkled ice that stretched all the way out to the horizon. Only the five space-suited figures in the foreground proclaimed that the panorama was of another world. — Arthur C. Clarke

Any man, in the right circumstances, could be dehumanized by panic. If — 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

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded. — Arthur C. Clarke

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

Any path to knowledge is a path to God-or Reality, whichever word one prefers to use — Arthur C. Clarke

I hope you're right. Apart from that, won't there be trouble when he discovers what you're trying to do? Because he will, you know." "I'll take that risk. Besides, we understand each other rather well." The physicist toyed with his pencil and stared into space for a while. "It's a very pretty problem. I like it," he said simply. Then he dived into a drawer and produced an enormous writing pad, quite the biggest that Stormgren had ever seen. — Arthur C. Clarke

Nothing in this scene will be changed by my death, Nicole thought. There will just be one less pair of eyes to observe its splendor. And one less collection of chemicals risen to consciousness to wonder what it all means. — Arthur C. Clarke

Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive. — Arthur C. Clarke

If we are unable to download, remember us. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

The dismantling of the vast and wholly parasitic armaments industry had given an unprecedented - sometimes, indeed, unhealthy - boost to the world economy. No longer were vital raw materials and brilliant engineering talents swallowed up in a virtual black hole - or, even worse, turned to destruction. Instead, they could be used to repair the ravages and neglect of centuries, by rebuilding the world. — 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 towards new ends. — Arthur C. Clarke

Problems seldom go away if they're ignored. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything. — Arthur C. Clarke

Astronomy was full of such intriguing but meaningless coincidences. The most famous was the fact that, from the Earth, both Sun and Moon have the same apparent diameter. — Arthur C. Clarke

You hide a Sun-powered device in darkness - only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light. In other words, the monolith may be some kind of alarm. And we have triggered it. — Arthur C. Clarke

What had been a perceived threat, a lien in a sense on future human behavior, was quickly reduced to a historical curiosity. — Arthur C. Clarke

In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night. And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

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? — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

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

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. From — Arthur C. Clarke

For if not true, they are well imagined... — Arthur C. Clarke

But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight scar across the flat Florida landscape - the multiple rails of a giant launching track. At its end, surrounded by vehicles and gantries, a spaceplane lay gleaming in a pool of light, being prepared for its leap to the stars. In a sudden failure of perspective, brought on by his swift changes of speed and height, it seemed to Floyd that he was looking down on a small silver moth, caught in the beam of a flashlight. — Arthur C. Clarke

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

You cannot reason with a rifle bullet fired from across the battlefield. You cannot negotiate with an artillery shell lobbed from over the horizon. You cannot compromise with a nuclear warhead screaming in from half a world away. The only answer to the gun, the only defense for the gun, has been more guns. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. — Arthur C. Clarke

Once, I believed that space could
have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God's
handwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. — Arthur C. Clarke

He happy hum of humanity. — Arthur C. Clarke

But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called "spirit." And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God. — Arthur C. Clarke

2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history ; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined. — Arthur C. Clarke

As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying. — Arthur C. Clarke

Even the few serious crimes that did occur received no particular attention in the news. For well-bred people do not, after all, care to read about the social gaffes of others. — Arthur C. Clarke

He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect that he would also understand. — Arthur C. Clarke

Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar's chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This, — Arthur C. Clarke

The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him. — Arthur C. Clarke

..the happy hum of humanity. — Arthur C. Clarke

After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization. — Arthur C. Clarke

Could we go into your room?" she asked. "I knew it. I knew it," he said, spinning around and sliding quickly toward his door. "It's finally happend, just like in dreams. An intelligent, beautiful woman is going to declare her undying affection — Arthur C. Clarke

The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children. — Arthur C. Clarke

He left the unspoken question hanging in the air. How did one annoy a two- kilometre-long black rectangular slab? And just what form would its disapproval take — Arthur C. Clarke

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out. — Arthur C. Clarke

The Chairman glared across three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers of space at Conrad Taylor, who reluctantly subsided, like a volcano biding its time. — Arthur C. Clarke

Across the gulf of centuries, the blind smile of Homer is turned upon our age. Along the echoing corridors of time, the roar of the rockets merges now with the creak of the wind-taut rigging. For somewhere in the world today, still unconscious of his destiny, walks the boy who will be the first Odysseus of the Age of Space. — Arthur C. Clarke

Mars is the next frontier, what the Wild West was, what America was 500 years ago. It's time to strike out anew ... Mars is where the action is for the next thousand years ... The characteristic of human nature, and perhaps our simian branch of the family, is curiosity and exploration. When we stop doing that, we won't be humans anymore. I've seen far more in my lifetime than I ever dreamed. Many of our problems on Earth can only be solved by space technology ... The next step is in space. It's inevitable. — Arthur C. Clarke

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. — Arthur C. Clarke

And in its sky was such a sun as no opium eater could ever have imagined in his wildest dreams. Too hot to be white, it was a searing ghost at the frontiers of the ultraviolet, burning its planets with radiations which would be instantly lethal to all earthly forms of life. For millions of kilometers around extended great veils of gas and dust, fluorescing in countless colors as the blasts of ultraviolet tore through them. It was a star against which Earth's pale sun would have been as feeble as a glowworm at noon. — Arthur C. Clarke

Judge me by my deeds, though they are few, rather than my words, though they are many. — Arthur C. Clarke