Top 450 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

53. “The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

54. “What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy’s point of view.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

55. “We always thought the living Earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

56. “Guns are the crutches of the impotent.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

57. “As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

58. “The universe must be full of voices, calling from star to star in a myriad tongues. One day we shall join that cosmic conversation.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

59. “Until we get rid of religion, we won’t be able to conduct the search for God.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

60. “Civilization will reach maturity only when it learns to value diversity of character and of ideas.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

61. “No trilogy should have more than four books.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

62. “Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

63. “Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little consolation that it was always the thirteenth that actually happened.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

64. “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

65. “Even by the twenty-second century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

66. “In the long run, there are no secrets. in science. The universe will not cooperate in a cover-up.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

67. “It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

68. “When the Sun shrinks to a dull red dwarf, it will not be dying. It will just be starting to live and everything that has gone before will merely be a prelude to its real history.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

69. “Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

70. “But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

71. “I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

72. “Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

73. “They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

74. “A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

75. “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

76. “Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

77. “The rash assertion that “God made man in His own image” is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

78. “No one of intelligence resents the inevitable.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

79. “Anything that is theoretically possible will be achieved in practice, no matter what the technical difficulties are, if it is desired greatly enough.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

80. “I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

81. “The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

82. “Those meaningless and unanswerable questions the minds keep returning to, like a tongue exploring a broken tooth.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

83. “Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

84. “When one has to ask, “Am I really in love?” the answer is always “No”.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

85. “Can the synthesis of man and machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

86. “I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

87. “Sometimes a decision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to enforce it. That’s why you need a captain. You can’t run a ship by a committee-at least not all the time.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

88. “Humor was the enemy of desire.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

89. “We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return...”

— Arthur C. Clarke

90. “Why, Robert Singh often wondered, did we give our hearts to friends whose life spans are so much shorter than our own?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

92. “When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

93. “Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

94. “I doubt if there is a single field of study so theoretical, so remote from what is laughingly called everyday life, that it may not one day produce something that will shake the world.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

95. “Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you’ll find their work only at art theaters.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

96. “A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

97. “Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

98. “All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

99. “After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them – not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

100. “Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?”

— Arthur C. Clarke