Arthur C. Clarke Quotes are a must-read for anyone who wants to be inspired and learn about the power of science and technology. Clarke was a brilliant writer and thinker who understood the potential of science and technology to improve our world. His quotes are insightful, inspiring, and full of wisdom.
Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, on December 16, 1917. Clarke served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He worked for the British Interplanetary Society and wrote science fiction for magazines. Clarke’s first book, Prelude to Space, was published in 1951.
He is the author of many books, including the 1953 novel Childhood’s End and the script for the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke died in Sri Lanka on March 19, 2008.
Arthur C. Clarke is considered one of the most influential science fiction writers of all time. His work has inspired countless others in the genre, and has even had a profound impact on the real world. For instance, his idea for a communication satellite was eventually realized, and his predictions about solar power and the use of satellites for weather forecasting have come true. Clarke’s writing is both imaginative and scientifically accurate, making him a true pioneer in the field of science fiction.
68 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes
- “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
2. “One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn’t require religion at all.”
3. “One of the greatest tragedies in mankind’s entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.”
4. “When in doubt, say nothing and move on.”
5. “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 possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy.”
6. “Science is the only religion of mankind.”
7. “Faith in one’s own destiny was among the most valuable of the gifts which the gods could bestow upon a man,”
8. “You can’t have action without reaction.”
9. “The greatest danger is panic”
10. “Now I’m a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”
Famous Arthur C. Clarke Quotes
11. “Humor was the enemy of desire.”
12. “The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.”
13. “Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.”
14. “Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”
15. “Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence”
16. “Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity.”
17. “I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her. ”
18. “Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.”
19. “Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological”
20. “Much had been lost during the centuries, for men seldom bother to preserve the commonplace articles of everyday life.”
Mind-Thought Arthur C. Clarke Quotes
21. “There could be no ghosts upon a world that had never known life.”
22. “No electronic computer can match the human brain at associating apparently irrelevant facts.”
23. “Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.”
24. “It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.”
25. “Because politics is the science of the possible, it only appeals to second-rate minds. The first raters only interested in the impossible”
26. “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.”
27. “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
28. “It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
29. “Sometimes when I’m in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.”
30. “The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.”
Arthur C. Clarke Quotes About and Science
31. “If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.”
32. “The limits of possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.”
33. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
34. “Problems seldom go away if they’re ignored.”
35. “Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.”
36. “Science fiction could now be made far more convincing by science fact.”
37. “The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play”
38. “I will not be afraid because I understand … And understanding is happiness.”
39. “When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart,”
40. “Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.”
41. “A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.”
42. “I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.”
43. “If he was indeed mad, his delusions were beautifully organized.”
44. “Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.”
45. “Magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.”
46. “I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.”
47. “A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”
48. “It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.”
49. “The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion”
50. “It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”
51. “As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.”
52. “If we both believe that we have nothing to learn from the other, is it not obvious that we will both be wrong?”
53. “The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.”
54. “This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.”
55. “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”
56. “No single individual, however eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years.”
57. “A man who grows that much hair,’ critics were fond of saying, ‘must have a lot to hide.”
58. “Work is the best remedy for any shock,”
59. “The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.”
60. “It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.”
61. “Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.”
62. “It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the sky should be so hard.”
63. “The rash assertion that “God made man in His own image” is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.”
64. “If man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.”
65. “It was idle to speculate, to build pyramids of surmise on a foundation of ignorance.”
66. “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.”
67. “Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.”
68. “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.”