Top 450 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “And it was difficult to imagine what answer Earth could possibly send, except a tactfully sympathetic, “Good-bye.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

152. “Now I can rejoice that I knew you, rather than mourn because I lost you.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

153. “I am the biggest anachronism on Planet Earth.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

154. “One day, perhaps, the human race would develop a new aesthetic; generations of artists might arise whose ideals were not based upon the natural forms of Earth molded by wind and water.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

155. “Mammoths, building a signal to Mars, on the North American ice cap.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

156. “Rolf van der Berg was the right man, in the right place, at the right time; no other combination would have worked. Which, of course, is how much of history is made.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

157. “Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly closed, recycling all food, air, and other expendables. But, of course, that’s just how the Earth operates – on a slightly larger scale.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

158. “History never repeats itself – but historical situations recur.” As.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

159. “Any man who had ever worked in a hardened missile site would have felt at home in Clavius. Here on the Moon were the same arts and hardware of underground living, and of protection against a hostile environment; but here they had been turned to the purposes of peace. After ten thousand years, Man had at last found something as exciting as war.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

160. “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

161. “All we want from Thalassa is a hundred thousand tons of water. Or, to be more specific, ice.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

162. “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 possibly have the same lasting value.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

163. “The phenomenon of UFO doesn’t say anything about the presence of intelligence in space. It just shows how rare it is here on the earth.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

164. “It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

165. “The thing’s hollow – it goes on forever – and – oh my God! – it’s full of stars!”

— Arthur C. Clarke

166. “Now I’m a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

167. “It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

168. “Hello, Dave,” said Hal presently. “Have you found the trouble?” This.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

169. “There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

170. “Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

171. “Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

172. “Often we had no choice: we couldn’t reform the whole world. And didn’t somebody once say ‘Politics is the art of the possible’?” “Quite true – which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

173. “When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most powerful telescope; now they are worlds, each unique, and one of them – Io – is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

174. “Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

175. “One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

176. “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

177. “The Ramans do everything in threes.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

178. “I seem to be having difficulty – my first instructor was Dr. Chandra. He taught me to sing a song, it goes like this, ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you.’” The.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

179. “Afrikaans is one of the world’s best languages in which to curse; even when spoken politely, it can bruise innocent bystanders.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

180. “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.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

181. “The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

182. “No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges – absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”

— Arthur C. Clarke

183. “The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer, the brain and nervous system of the ship.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

184. “The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas, 1968, became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

185. “My colleagues and I, Dr. Floyd, will stake our reputations on this. TMA-1 has nothing to do with the Chinese. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the human race – for when it was buried, there were no humans. “You see, it is approximately three million years old. What you are now looking at is the first evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

186. “The opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

187. “And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

188. “Pure coincidence, of course, but a sensible man makes coincidences work for him.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

189. “Democracy, frequently defined as “Individual greed, moderated by an efficient but not too zealous government.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

190. “My dear Rikki,” Karellen retorted, “it’s only by not taking the human race seriously that I retain what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess!” Despite himself, Stormgren smiled.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

191. “You hide a Sun-powered device in darkness – only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light. In other words, the monolith may be some kind of alarm. And we have triggered it.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

192. “How obvious, now, was that mathematical ratio of its sides, the quadratic sequence 1:4:9! And how naive to have imagined that the series ended there, in only three dimensions!”

— Arthur C. Clarke

193. “I’m only an ex-astronomer; it’s years since I did any real research. Now I’m a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

194. “Creationism, perhaps the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

195. “Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn’t technically unsafe.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

196. “Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias – boredom.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

197. “Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

198. “Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

199. “They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

200. “This touch of luxury was typical of the Base, though it was sometimes hard to explain its necessity to the folk back on Earth. Every man and woman in Clavius had cost a hundred thousand dollars in training and transport and housing; it was worth a little extra to maintain their peace of mind. This was not art for art’s sake, but art for the sake of sanity.”

— Arthur C. Clarke