Top 450 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Because Nature always balances her books, the Sun lost some velocity in the transaction; but the effect would not be measurable for a few thousand years.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

302. “There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence – or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly’s wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

303. “Children grow fast in this low gravity. But they don’t age so quickly – they’ll live longer than we do.” Floyd stared in fascination at the self-assured little lady, noting the graceful carriage and the unusually delicate bone structure.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

304. “But at least we have answered one ancient question. We are not alone. The stars will never again be the same to us.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

305. “This was the fundamental problem with rockets – and no one had ever discovered any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a mission; it squared it.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

306. “Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of times elsewhere in the Universe; that was almost an article of faith among scientists.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

307. “Can you sum up your ideas in less than – oh, a thousand bits?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

308. “Cassini – who discovered Japetus in 1671 – also observed that it was six times brighter on one side of its orbit than the other.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

309. “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

310. “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

311. “There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he had.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

312. “The long-heralded global village is almost upon us, but it will last for only a flickering moment in the history of mankind. Before we even realise that it has come, it will be superseded – by the global family.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

313. “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

314. “There was nothing wrong, he reminded himself, with healthy fear; only when it escalated into panic did it become a killer.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

315. “But economical Mother Nature was always repeating herself, on such vastly different scales as the swirl of milk stirred into coffee, the cloud lanes of a cyclonic storm, the arms of a spiral nebula.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

316. “A major part of his job was deciding when warnings could be ignored, when they could be dealt with at leisure – and when they had to be treated as real emergencies. If he paid equal attention to all the ship’s cries for help, he would never get anything done. He.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

317. “Floyd made it a rule never to worry about events over which he could have absolutely no control; any external threat would reveal itself in due time and must be dealt with then. But he could not help wondering if they had done.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

318. “Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to human relationships as well.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

319. “Beyond gravity, some of that freedom was regained; with the loss of weight went many of the cares and worries of Earth. Heywood.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

320. “Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

321. “Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

322. “What had been a perceived threat, a lien in a sense on future human behavior, was quickly reduced to a historical curiosity.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

323. “The billion-year battle against the force of gravity was over.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

324. “An author should never turn down the opportunity for a new experience.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

325. “The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials – these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

326. “The familiar can be as shocking as the strange – when it is in the wrong place.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

327. “Instantly, there had been cries of protest from the industrial archaeologists, outraged at such vandalism, and from the naturalists, who pointed out that the penguins simply loved the abandoned pipeline.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

328. “There could be no ghosts upon a world that had never known life.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

329. “Do we use models to help us find the truth? Or do we know the truth first, and then develop the mathematics to explain it?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

330. “This implies, of course, the development of a really compact and light-weight method of storing or producing electricity, at least an order of magnitude better than our present clumsy batteries. Such an invention has been overdue for about fifty years;.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

331. “A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

332. “After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

333. “On the placidly flowing river of time, he wished only to make a few ripples: he shrank from diverting its course.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

334. “Futilitarianism.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

335. “Lucretius hit it on the nail when he said that religion was the by-product of fear – a reaction to a mysterious and often hostile universe.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

336. “My father always said that you cannot graft a culture of science and engineering onto an Iron Age society. And so it’s proving.’ Bisesa studied him. ‘You’ll have to tell me about your father.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

337. “They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of absolute omnipotence;.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

338. “There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men’s minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

339. “All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

340. “I’d hate to do arithmetic, George thought to himself, in a system based on fourteen.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

341. “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

342. “And there still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of Love and Art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with Love.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

343. “Only Time is universal; Night and Day are merely quaint local customs found on those planets that tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

344. “So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

345. “He broke open the first of the meal packets, and inspected it without enthusiasm. The name on the label – SPACETASTIES – was enough to put him off. And he had grave doubts about the promise printed underneath: ‘Guaranteed crumbless’.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

346. “Yet there was also something slightly spooky about them. Norton could never understand how men with advanced scientific and technical training could possibly believe some of the things he had heard Cosmo Christers state as incontrovertible fact.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

347. “Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

348. “Pat’s knowledge of terrestrial history was vague; like most residents of the Moon, he tended to assume that nothing of great importance had ever happened.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

349. “It was fascinating to watch that agile mind trying one opening after another, testing and rejecting all the theories that Stormgren himself had abandoned long ago.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

350. “I agree with you, Captain,” he whispered. “The human race has to live with its conscience. Whatever the Hermians argue, survival is not everything.”

— Arthur C. Clarke