Quotes from Arthur C. Clarke

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

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.

no on of intelligence resents the inevitable.

Because politics is the science of the possible, it only appeals to second-rate minds. The first raters only interested in the impossible

Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.

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

if one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible.

a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.

There was nothing left of Earth. They had leeched away the last atoms of its substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs towards the Sun.

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.

When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.

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

Alvin was an explorer, and all explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.

Problems seldom go away if they're ignored.

any man, in the right circumstances, could be dehumanized by panic.

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

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

Turing had pointed out that, if one could carry out a prolonged conversation with a machine—whether by typewriter or microphones was immaterial—without being able to distinguish between its replies and those that a man might give, then the machine was thinking, by any sensible definition of the word. Hal could pass the Turing test with ease. The

no one of intelligence resents the inevitable.

Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson.

He felt like a young student again, confronted with all the art and knowledge of mankind. The experience was both exhilarating and depressing; a whole universe lay at his fingertips, but the fraction of it he could explore in an entire lifetime was so negligible that he was sometimes overwhelmed with despair.

The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion.

The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice.