Arthur C. Clarke: Trending quotes (page 10)

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: 2000s and posthumous publications, The Light of Other Days (2000), Ch. 6

Patience , Science

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Ah, but which king? The monarch who had stood on these granite flagstones — scarcely worn then, eighteen hundred years ago — was probably an able and intelligent man; but he failed to conceive that the time could ever come when he would fade into an anonymity as deep as that of his humblest subjects.
Source: 1970s, The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Ch. 11 “The Silent Princess”, p. 65

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke

“That’s what I think they’re doing, eating themselves alive. They murder in the name of God and blindly destroy the very ecosystem that sustains them.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Richter 10

“People are people.” Bert shrugged.
“What you’re really saying is that people are animals,” Crane replied. “And I say to you, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can make a civilization, a real civilization, built on real understanding of ourselves and our universe.”
Source: 1990s, Richter 10 (1996), Chapter 20, “Shimani-Gashi” (p. 362)

God , Thinking

“What we find incredible is the way that people - right up to the early 2000s!”

Arthur C. Clarke

Source: 1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) p. 32
Context: calmly accepted behaviour we would consider atrocious. And believed in the most mindboggled... Nonsense, which surely any rational person would dismiss out of hand.' 'Examples, please.' 'Well... every year in some countries thousands of little girls were hideously mutilated to preserve their virginity? Many of them died - but the authorities turned a blind eye.' 'I agree that was terrible - but what could my government do about it?' 'A great deal - if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil and bought its weapons, like the landmines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousand.'

Way , People

“So many people did it that it was no longer an obsession; it was a demographic.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Richter 10

Source: 1990s, Richter 10 (1996), Chapter 4, “Geomorphological Processes” (p. 77)

People

“Of course, we in the so-called developed countries thought we were civilized.”

Arthur C. Clarke

At least war wasn't respectable any more, and the United Nations was always doing its best to stop the wars that did break out.''Not very successfully: I'd give it about three out of ten.
1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)

Country

“Once you asked me about crime nowadays - I said any such interest pathological - maybe prompted by the endless sickening television programmes of your time - never able to watch more than few minutes myself... disgusting!”

Arthur C. Clarke

Source: 1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)

Time

“The search for alien artefacts in the Solar System should be a perfectly legitimate branch of science ('exoarchaeology'?). Unfortunately, it has been largely discredited by claims that such evidence has already been found - and has been deliberately suppressed by NASA!”

Arthur C. Clarke

1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), p. 97, Acknowledgements

Search , Science

“Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. But it is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider what should be saved.”

Arthur C. Clarke

1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), p. 88, Epilogue