Arthur C. Clarke Quotes
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The vendors seemed comical, so intent were they on their slivers of meaningless profit, all unaware of the desolate ages that lay in their own near future, their own imminent deaths.
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Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it.
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The Ramans do everything in threes.
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Others, one suspects, are afraid that the crossing of space, and above all contact with intelligent but nonhuman races, may destroy the foundations of their religious faith. They may be right, but in any event their attitude is one which does not bear logical examination - for a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
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Somewhere back at the beginning I was chosen to be Jester, and there is only one Jester at a time in Diaspar. Most people think that is one too many.
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The best proof that there’s intelligent life in outer space is the fact that it hasn’t come here.
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We have abolished space here on the little Earth; we can never abolish the space that yawns between the stars. Once again, as in the days when Homer sang, we are face-to-face with immensity and must accept its grandeur and terror, its inspiring possibilities and its dreadful restraints.
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There was only one thing of which he could be certain now. Boredom would not be a serious problem for a considerable time to come.
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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.
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If children have interests then education happens.
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I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.
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SETI is probably the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.
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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.
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As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun. Well, I actually don't feel a day older than 89!
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The danger of asteroid or comet impact is one of the best reasons for getting into space … I'm very fond of quoting my friend Larry Niven: 'The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!'
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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...
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We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.
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Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
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Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea - in science, politics, art, or whatever - seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:(1) 'It's completely impossible - don't waste my time';(2) 'It's possible, but it's not worth doing';(3) 'I said it was a good idea all along.'
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Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
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CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.
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I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about..
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As quoted in Seeds of Peace : A Catalogue of Quotations (1986) by Jeanne Larson, Madge Micheels-Cyrus, p. 244
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It is not my duty as an historian to predict the future, only to observe and interpret the past. But its lesson is clear enough; we have lived too long out of contact with reality, and now the time has come to rebuild our lives.