Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke
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.
– Arthur C. Clarke
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.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.
– Arthur C. Clarke
I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarius and we're skeptical.
– Arthur C. Clarke
I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.
– Arthur C. Clarke
I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about..
– Arthur C. Clarke
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
– Arthur C. Clarke
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
– Arthur C. Clarke
It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.
– Arthur C. Clarke
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God-but to create him.
– Arthur C. Clarke
New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!
– Arthur C. Clarke
Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading manuals without the software.
– Arthur C. Clarke
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.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
– Arthur C. Clarke
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
– Arthur C. Clarke
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
– Arthur C. Clarke
The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
– Arthur C. Clarke
The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.
– Arthur C. Clarke
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
– Arthur C. Clarke
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
– Arthur C. Clarke
This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
– Arthur C. Clarke
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
– Arthur C. Clarke
At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
– Arthur C. Clarke
I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
– Arthur C. Clarke
A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.
– Arthur C. Clarke
It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.
– Arthur C. Clarke
The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.
– Arthur C. Clarke
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.
– Arthur C. Clarke