161 quotes
Only a lifetime ago, parents waved farewell to their emigrating children in the virtual certainty that they would never meet again.
And now, within one incredible generation, all this has changed.
We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)
Yet it was the impression that the unknown master has set out to create, Phoenix-like, from the dying embers of a great legend. He had captured, and held for all future ages to see, that beauty whose service is the purpose of life, and it sole justification.
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)
Kolya believed that the Mongols’ expansion was pathological. It was a ghastly spiral of positive feedback, born of Genghis Khan’s unquestioned military genius and fueled by easy conquests, a plague of insanity and destruction that had spread across most of the known world.
Time's Eye (2003)
A single neutron begins the chain-reaction that in an instant can destroy a million lives and the toil of generations. Equally insignificant and unimportant are the trigger-events which can sometimes change a man’s course of action and so alter the whole pattern of his future.
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)
The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.
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.
Clarke's Three Laws, et al (1962)
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.
Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)
I now spend a good part of my day dreaming of times past, present and future. As I try to survive on 15 hours sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams. Being completely wheel-chaired doesn't stop my mind from roaming the universe — on the contrary!
Peace cannot just be wished; it involves hard work, courage and persistence... Let us harness our collective energies to create a culture of peace and a land of prosperity.
Over the next fifty years, thousands of people will travel to Earth's orbit—and then to the Moon and beyond. Space travel and space tourism—will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet.
I am afraid that this chapter will amply demonstrate the truth of Clarke's 69th Law, viz., "Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software." In both cases the cure is simple though usually very expensive.
Clarke's Three Laws, et al (1962)
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.
Glide Path (1963)
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!
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.
The City and the Stars (1956)
Guns are the Crutches of the Impotent.
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.
Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)
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.
The Light of Other Days (2000)
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.
Exploration of Space (1952)
“Very ingenious, like all your theories,” said Stormgren. “I wish you’d give them Opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one—”
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)
I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation...