Top 450 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “The eruption had hurled the thing out of its normal environment, deep down in the flaming atmosphere of the sun. It was a miracle that it had survived its journey through space; already it must be dying, as the forces that controlled its huge, invisible body lost their hold over the electrified gas which was the only substance it possessed.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

402. “For it was their world, not Man’s. However he might shape it for his own purposes, it would be his duty always to safeguard the interests of its rightful owners. No one could tell what part they might have to play in the history of the universe. And when, as was one day inevitable, Man himself came to the notice of yet higher races, he might well be judged by his behaviour here on Mars.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

403. “How I envy them,” said Colonel Jones. “Sometimes it’s quite a relief to have something trivial to worry about.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

404. “But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

405. “He might himself be putting on a superb act, following the performance by logic alone and with his own strange emotions completely untouched, as an anthropologist might take part in some primitive rite. The fact that he uttered the appropriate sounds, and made the expected responses, really proved nothing at all.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

406. “Our own grandchildren may demonstrate that-sometimes- Gigantic is Beautiful.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

407. “Men had sought beauty in many forms – in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

408. “For well-bred people do not, after all, care to read about the social gaffes of others.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

409. “Evolution and science had come to the same answers; and the work of Nature had lasted longer. At.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

410. “Enjoy them while you may,” answered Rashaverak gently. “They will not be yours for long.” It was advice that might have been given to any parent in any age: but now it contained a threat and a terror it had never held before.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

411. “For the last time, David Bowman slept.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

412. “That’s still looking a long way ahead. For the present, you’re the only person who should attempt communication. Agreed, Captain?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

413. “He lifted the telephone receiver and pressed it against the plastic of his helmet. If there had been a dialing sound he could have heard it through the conducting material. But, as he had expected, there was only silence. So – it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was clearly not intended to deceive but rather – he hoped – to reassure. That was a very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not remove his suit until he had completed his voyage of exploration.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

414. “Because each of us is the sum of all we have ever experienced. Only the very young have a clean slate. The rest of us must live forever with everything we have ever been.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

415. “Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, “What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

416. “Michael O’Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

417. “Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became unbearably dull.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

418. “And just fifty years had separated the Wright Brothers from the first jet airliners.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

419. “While there was life, there was hope;.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

420. “I would be greatly distressed if this book contributed still further to the seduction of the gullible, now cynically exploited by all the media.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

421. “I said nothing about men adapting themselves to Mars. Have you ever considered the possibility of Mars meeting us half-way?”

— Arthur C. Clarke

422. “I thought this couldn’t happen in astronomy. Isn’t celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

423. “Whatever their origin, the human race was fortunate to have seen such a wonder; it could exist for only a brief moment of time in the history of the Solar System.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

424. “News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

425. “We wanted you to have a feel for the size of your habitat, in case you needed that to be more comfortable with the design process.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

426. “Don’t believe anything I’ve told you – merely because I said it.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

427. “Yet if there were no hazards there would be no achievement, no sense of adventure.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

428. “Ladies and gentlemen, those flames from the port engines are perfectly normal. The stewardess will be coming around in a moment to serve coffee, tea, or milk. I’m sorry we don’t have anything stronger on this flight – regulations don’t permit it.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

429. “As to the nature of that drive, one thing was now certain, even though all else was mystery. There were no jets of gas, no beams of ions or plasma thrusting Rama into its new orbit. No one put it better than Sergeant Professor Myron, when he said, in shocked.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

430. “This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only purpose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astronomical phenomena, ‘Mere dead matter’ was one of their favourite phrases.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

431. “Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

432. “I agree that was terrible – but what could my government do about it?” “A great deal – if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil – and bought its weapons, like the land mines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousands.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

433. “Nevertheless, when you did not know what you were looking for, it was important to avoid all prejudices and preconceptions; something that at first sight seemed irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to be a vital clue.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

434. “A truly intelligent race is not likely to be unfriendly.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

435. “This would involve disconnection – the computer equivalent of death. Despite.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

436. “It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the sky should be so hard.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

437. “Because each of us is the sum of all we have ever experienced. Only the very young have a clean slate.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

438. “I don’t believe all this just happened,” Nicole said. “Not on another planet. Not anywhere. Natural evolution simply does not result in the kind of interspecies harmony we have witnessed the last two days.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

439. “It seemed unfair that this should have happened in his time, after all these centuries of rest. But men cannot bargain with Fate, and choose peace or adventure as they wish.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

440. “Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

441. “Even a doomed man might reasonably be expected to take some slight interest in a few thousand square meters of gems. He.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

442. “Like every human being, Alvin was in some measure a machine, his actions predetermined by his inheritance. That did not alter his need for understanding and sympathy, nor did it render him immune to loneliness or frustration. To his own people, he was so unaccountable a creature that they sometimes forgot that he still shared their emotions.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

443. “They no longer formed a single group, united in the common cause of survival. Now their lives had diverged again into a score of independent aims and ambitions. Humanity had swallowed them up once more, and the ocean swallows a raindrop.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

444. “It seemed to him that his ship was rather like a stranded whale that had managed a difficult birth in an alien element. He hoped that the new calf would survive.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

445. “The ladies were quite uninterested; either because they did not care for mathematics, or preferred to ignore birthdays.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

446. “There was no objection when he said: “I’m going after it.” Nor did he expect there to be; his life was now his own, to do with as he pleased. He.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

447. “However much the universe and its mysteries might call him, this was where he was born and where he belonged. It would never satisfy him, yet always he would return. He had gone half-way across the Galaxy to learn this simple truth.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

448. “Martin’s one of the nicest fellows you could meet, as long as you don’t do it too often.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

449. “They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn: and only Karellen’s ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

450. “I am unable to distinguish clearly between your religious ceremonies and apparently identical behavior at the sporting and cultural functions you have transmitted to me.”

— Arthur C. Clarke