Arthur C. Clarke Quotes
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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.
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What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy’s point of view.
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What is becoming more interesting than the myths themselves has been the study of how the myths were constructed from sparse or unpromising facts-indeed, sometimes from no facts-in a kind of mute conspiracy of longing, very rarely under anybody’s conscious control.
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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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As quoted in Seeds of Peace : A Catalogue of Quotations (1986) by Jeanne Larson, Madge Micheels-Cyrus, p. 244
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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.
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Even though you were once a goddess, Kalidasa’s heaven was only an illusion.
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Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
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Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.
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The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
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Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.
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I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
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There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
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As quoted in Ted Talk 'The child-driven education' by Sugata Mitra (2012)
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The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
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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.
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A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true.
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Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
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There still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of love and art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with love.
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Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.
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We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return … The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation … the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.
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Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor - but they have few followers now.
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I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.
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Through long and bitter experience, Rajasinghe had learned never to trust first impressions, but also never to ignore them.