Arthur C. Clarke quotes - page 3

I am unable to distinguish clearly between your religious ceremonies and apparently identical behavior at the sporting and cultural functions you have transmitted to me. (Arthur C. Clarke)
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. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
'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. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias - boredom. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
If children have interests then education happens. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
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. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
The Ramans do everything in threes. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge ... no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command ... But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young. (Arthur C. Clarke)
The best proof that there's intelligent life in outer space is the fact that it hasn't come here. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
If the house is to be demolished tomorrow anyhow, people seem to feel, we may as well burn the furniture today. None of our problems are insoluble...But it seems clear that to prevail we humans will have to act with a smartness and selflessness that has so far eluded us during our long and tangled history. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
SETI is probably the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers - and thermonuclear weapons. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
Since women are better at producing babies, presumably Nature has given men some talent to compensate. But for the moment I can't think of it. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of view. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have broken the glass of the fire-alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
I want to be remembered most as a writer - one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return... View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all. (Arthur C. Clarke)
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. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction thennow, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad, or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind? And, although I do not necessarily agree with the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin's advocacy of evolution as a major proof of the glory of God, de Chardin's attitude is both logical and inspiring. A creator who laid the foundations for the entire future at the beginning of time is far more awesome than a clumsy tinkerer who constantly modifies his creations and throws away entire species in the process. View quote
Arthur C. Clarke
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! View quote
Arthur C. Clarke