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Arthur C. Clarke Quotes | Quotes said by Arthur C. Clarke

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #1

    (...)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system. With his own eyes, he had seen the volcanoes of Mars erupt for the first time in a billion years; Venus briefly naked as her atmosphere was blasted into space before she herself was consumed; the gas giants exploding into incandescent fireballs. But these were empty, meaningless spectacles compared with the tragedy of Earth.
    That, too, he had watched through the lenses of cameras that had survived a few minutes longer than the devoted men who had sacrificed the last moments of their lives to set them up. He had seen ...
    ... the Great Pyramid, glowing dully red before it slumped into a puddle of molten stone ...
    ... the floor of the Atlantic, baked rock-hard in seconds, before it was submerged again, by the lava gushing from the volcanoes of the Mid-ocean Rift...
    ... the Moon rising above the flaming forests of Brazil and now itself shining almost as brilliantly as had the Sun, on its last setting, only minutes before ...
    ... the continent of Antarctica emerging briefly after its long burial, as the kilometres of ancient ice were burned away ...
    ... the mighty central span of the Gibraltar Bridge, melting even as it slumped downward through the burning air ...
    In that last century the Earth was haunted with ghosts - not of the dead, but of those who now could never be born. For five hundred years the birthrate had been held at a level that would reduce the human population to a few millions when the end finally came. Whole cities - even countries - had been deserted as mankind huddled together for History's closing act.


  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #2

    . . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #3

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #4

    ...science fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish that it could.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #5

    ..the happy hum of humanity.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #6

    [The Devil in the Dark] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #7

    1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
    2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
    3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #8

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #9

    After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #10

    And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #11

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #12

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #13

    Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #14

    Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness. / At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays--especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare--or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them. / So he switched to opera--usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. 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; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more. / Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart. / And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #15

    But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #16

    But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man only at the end of a long and busy life, he sat before the keyboard and filled the air with his beloved Bach.
    Perhaps he was deceiving himself, perhaps this was some merciful trick of the mind but now it seemed to Jan that this what he had always wished to do. His secret ambition had at last dared to emerge into the full light of consciousness.

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #17

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #18

    Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #19

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #20

    For the last century, almost all top political appointments [on the planet Earth] had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to the people who volunteered for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewed political commentator had remarked: “We want a President who has to be carried screaming and kicking into the White House — but will then do the best job he possibly can, so that he’ll get time off for good behavior.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #21

    He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #22

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #23

    He had a suspicion of plausible answers; they were so often wrong.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #24

    He had sometimes wondered if the real reason why men sought danger was that only thus could they find the companionship and solidarity which they unconsciously craved.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #25

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #26

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #27

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #28

    Humor was the enemy of desire.

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #29

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

  • Arthur C. Clarke Quote #30

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

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