Quotes from Arthur C. Clarke

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.

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.

Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.

I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarius and we're skeptical.

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.

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.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God--but to create him.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

Science is the only religion of mankind.

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.