Arthur C. Clarke
The choice, as Wells once said, is the Universe-or nothing. . . . The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close. Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea.Collection: Future
What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.Collection: Taken
Humor was the enemy of desire.Collection: Enemy
All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.Collection: Fate
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.Collection: Running
One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.Collection: Pain
I sometimes wonder how we spent leisure time before satellite television and Internet came along…and then I realise that I have spent more than half of my life in the ‘dark ages’!Collection: Life
Space is what stops everything from happening in the same place.Collection: Space
Before the current decade ends, fee-paying passengers will be experiencing suborbital flights aboard privately funded vehicles. . . . It won't be too long before bright young men and women set their eyes on careers in Earth orbit and say: "I want to work 200 kilometers from home-straight up!"Collection: Future
A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible-indeed, inevitable-the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.Collection: Communication
It will be possible in a few more years to build radio controlled rockets which can be steered into such orbits beyond the limits of the atmosphere and left to broadcast scientific information back to the Earth. A little later, manned rockets will be able to make similar flights with sufficient excess power to break the orbit and return to Earth. (1945) [Predicting communications satellites.]Collection: Communication
It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.Collection: Ideas
In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]Collection: Book
Science demands patience.Collection: Demand
The information age has been driven and dominated by technopreneurs. We now have to apply these technologies in saving lives, improving livelihoods and lifting millions of people out of squalor, misery and suffering. In other words, our focus must now move from the geeks to the meek.Collection: Moving
Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.Collection: Stars
I want to be remembered most as a writer - one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.Collection: Imagination
There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in 'Childhood's End.' But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.Collection: Childhood
One orbit, with a radius of 42,000 kilometers, has a period of exactly 24 hours. A body in such an orbit, if its plane coincided with that of the Earth's equator, would revolve with the Earth and would thus be stationary above the same spot on the planet. It would remain fixed in the sky of a whole hemisphere ... [to] provide coverage to half the globe, and for a world service three would be required, though more could be readily utilized. (1945) [Predidicting geosynchronous communication satellites]Collection: Communication
Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.Collection: Mountain
Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Art
If I didn't exist, I would have invented myself.Collection: Ifs
In the long run, there are no secrets. in science. The universe will not cooperate in a cover-up.Collection: Running
Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.Collection: Religious
The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.Collection: Education
You don't believe in organized religion, yet a major theme in so many of your works seems to be a quest for God.Collection: Believe
When all else failed, you had to rely on eyeball intrumentation.Collection: Statistics
If man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.Collection: Travel
Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.Collection: Children
The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.Collection: Mother
Training was one thing, reality another.Collection: Reality
The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.Collection: Moon
I don't think there is such a thing as as a real prophet. You can never predict the future. We know why now, of course; chaos theory, which I got very interested in, shows you can never predict the future.Collection: Real
Can the synthesis of man and machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded?Collection: Men
One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.Collection: Taken
Deep beneath the surface of the Sun, enormous forces were gathering. At any moment, the energies of a million hydrogen bombs might burst forth in the awesome explosion.... Climbing at millions of miles per hour, an invisible fireball many times the size of Earth would leap from the Sun and head out across space.Collection: Space
The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.Collection: Running
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.Collection: Technology
Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?Collection: Atheist
Only small minds are impressed by large numbers.Collection: Science
What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of view.Collection: Views
Until we get rid of religion, we won't be able to conduct the search for God.Collection: Able
It is vital to remember that information - in the sense of raw data - is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.Collection: Knowledge
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.Collection: Science
You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.Collection: Way
People go through four stages before any revolutionary development: 1. It's nonsense, don't waste my time. 2. It's interesting, but not important. 3. I always said it was a good idea. 4. I thought of it first.Collection: Change
When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.Collection: Stranger