Top 450 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Now I can rejoice that I knew you, rather than mourn because I lost you.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

153. “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

154. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

161. “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

162. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

165. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

167. “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

168. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

170. “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

171. “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

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

— 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. “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

175. “The Ramans do everything in threes.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

176. “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

177. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

180. “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

181. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

185. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

187. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

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

— 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. “It was idle to speculate, to build pyramids of surmise on a foundation of ignorance.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

194. “In Brohier’s eyes, violence was not merely the last refuge of the incompetent. It was the gloating revenge of the sore loser.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

195. “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

196. “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

197. “But it was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography – much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

198. “But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

199. “He had already decided that X rays, sonic probes, neutron beams, and all other nondestructive means of investigation would be brought into play before he called up the heavy artillery of the laser. 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

200. “If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.”

— Arthur C. Clarke