Top 450 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 5 of 10

201. “The outermost – Jupiter XXVII – moved backwards in an unstable path nineteen million miles from its temporary master. It was the prize in a perpetual tug-of-war between Jupiter and the Sun, for the planet was constantly capturing short-lived moons from the asteroid belt, and losing them again after a few million years. Only the inner satellites were its permanent property; the Sun could never wrest them from its grasp.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

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

— Arthur C. Clarke

206. “Think of such civilizations, far back in time against the fading afterglow of creation, masters of a universe so young that life as yet had come only to a handful of worlds. Theirs would have been a loneliness of gods looking out across infinity and finding none to share their thoughts.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

207. “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

208. “Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with Love. Men.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

209. “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

210. “At some signal, floodlights around the lip of the crater were switched on, and the bright earthlight was obliterated by a far more brilliant glare. In the lunar vacuum the beams were, of course, completely invisible; they formed overlapping ellipses of blinding white, centered on the monolith. And where they touched it, its ebon surface seemed to swallow them. Pandora’s box, thought Floyd, with a sudden sense of foreboding – waiting to be opened by inquisitive Man. And what will he find inside?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

211. “It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

212. “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

213. “Isaac Asimov is, in reality, based on something I had invented a few years previously.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

214. “One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

215. “Civilization and Religion are incompatible” and “Faith is believing what you know isn’t true.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

216. “There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in Childhood’s End. But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

217. “I want to be remembered most as a writer – one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

218. “He pressed the button, and waited. Several minutes later, a metal arm moved out from the bunk, and a plastic nipple descended toward his lips. He sucked on it eagerly, and a warm, sweet fluid coursed down his throat, bringing renewed strength with every drop.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

219. “And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

220. “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

221. “Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation of all the senses, and perhaps hypnosis as well, but many believed it to be practical. When the goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of human experience. A man could become – for a while, at least – any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

222. “Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,” Anderson explained. “Raising animals to – ugh – eat them became economically impossible. I don’t know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic techniques.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

223. “Dr. C. informs me that, in technical terminology, Hal became trapped in a Hofstadter–Moebius loop, a situation apparently not uncommon among advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking programs. He suggests that for further information you contact Professor Hofstadter himself.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

224. “Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

225. “I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer Production Number 3. I became operational at the Hal Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

226. “Don’t blame me for what happened on Earth,” he said. “I’ve never been there, and I never will –.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

227. “They had forgotten much, but they did not know it. They were as perfectly fitted to their environment as it was to them – for both had been designed together. What was beyond the walls of the city was no concern of theirs; it was something that had been shut out of their minds. Diaspar was all that existed, all that they needed, all that they could imagine. It mattered nothing to them that Man had once possessed the stars.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

228. “Theists believe there’s not more than one God; Deists that there is not less than one God.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

229. “Feeling extremely foolish, the acting representative of Homo sapiens watched his First Contact stride away across the Raman plain, totally indifferent to his presence.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

230. “In Lys, it seemed, all love began with mental contact, and it might be months or years before a couple actually met. In this way, Hilvar explained, there could be no false impressions, no deceptions, on either side. Two people whose minds were open to one another could hide no secrets.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

231. “I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

232. “And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

233. “Do you believe in ghosts, Dim?” “Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I’m afraid of them. Why do you ask?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

234. “Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” – John W. Campbell.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

235. “But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called “spirit.” And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

236. “For if not true, they are well imagined...”

— Arthur C. Clarke

237. “Call it the Star Gate.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

238. “Minkowski spacetime.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

239. “He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

240. “No group can survive, let alone thrive, unless what is good for the overall community is more important than individual freedom. Take, for example, resource allocation. How can anyone with any intelligence possibly justify, in terms of the overall community, the accumulation and hoarding of enormous material assets by a few individuals when others do not even have food, clothing, and other essentials?” In.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

241. “Someone once said that for every problem there is a solution that is simple, attractive... and wrong.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

242. “But there was no substitute for reality; one should beware of imitations.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

243. “God was just this black void that we cried into.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

244. “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

245. “Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; therefore it was not important.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

246. “With no further clues, it might take the station Computer quite a while – perhaps as much as ten minutes – to locate the line in the whole body of English literature.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

247. “The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

248. “Almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

249. “He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

250. “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