Quotes from Arthur C. Clarke

That conflict: Technology as it develops is a prayer… but prayer is by definition a subversion of reason. There is no Loophole there.

I believe that Rama is a cosmic Ark, sent here to save—those who are worthy of salvation.

Or is the meaning of life no longer 42?

once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…

Like his great influence H.G. Wells, Clarke was a futurist and an ad astra guy, an inventor of Telstar twenty years before the engineers had the material to enact his plan.

Clarke's Law—"any increasingly complex technology will look like magic"—signified the undertow which in the Age of Limbaugh

Western man had relearned—what the rest of the world had never forgotten—that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth.

When a set of crises stressed the fledgling democracy in the paradise that had been created for the humans by the Ramans, an opportunistic tycoon seized power in the colony and began to ruthlessly suppress all opposition.

I am very proud of the fact that the Apollo-15 crew gave this name to a crater which they drove past in their lunar rover. On their return to earth, they sent me a beautiful 3-D map bearing the inscription: 'To Arthur Clarke with best personal regards from the crew of Apollo 15 and many thanks for your visions in space.

The numbers of distinct human societies or nations, when our race is twice its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the men who have ever lived up to the present time.

Look, whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.) Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along.

When one has to ask, "Am I really in love?" the answer is always "No".

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

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

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.

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

Now I understand," said the last man.

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.