ACArthur C. Clarke

100 collected words

Arthur C. Clarke

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.""Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

02Undated

It is hard to draw any line between compassion and love.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

03Undated

There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped towards new ends.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

04Undated

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

05Undated

In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

06Undated

Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

07Undated

..the happy hum of humanity.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

08Undated

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

09Undated

Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

10Undated

Imagine that every man’s mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock from which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but the individuality would have gone

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

11Undated

Once, I believed that space couldhave no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’shandwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

12Undated

Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

13Undated

Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

14Undated

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

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

15Undated

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

16Undated

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

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

17Undated

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

18Undated

But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme....

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

19Undated

Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

20Undated

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

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

21Undated

Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

22Undated

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

23Undated

Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view.

Arthur C. Clarke / quote

24Undated

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