Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.

The realisation that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realise sooner that our own world belongs to all its creatures.

If children have interests, then education happens.

When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.

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

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what's over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you'd go crazy.

No trilogy should have more than four books.

Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological

Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

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

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

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.

Anything that is theoretically possible will be achieved in practice, no matter what the technical difficulties are, if it is desired greatly enough.

Now I understand,” said the last man.

. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist.

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

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.

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

Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference we should each be treated with appropriate respect.

No one of intelligence resents the inevitable.

Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?

The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.

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

A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.

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.

We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.

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

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

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

He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.

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

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.

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

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.

Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.

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

... chemistry is a trade for people without enough imagination to be physicists.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.

As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there.

Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias - boredom.