Arthur C. Clarke: Trending quotes (page 5)

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Arthur C. Clarke: 414   quotes 13   likes

“The hypothesis you refer to as God, though not disprovable by logic alone, is unnecessary for the following reason.
If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of organization than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress. William of Ockham pointed out as recently as your fourteenth century that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. I cannot therefore understand why this debate continues.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 16 “Conversations with Starglider” (p. 95)

God , Quotes , Understanding , Problem

“… we have a situation in which millions of vehicles, each a miracle of often unnecssary complication, are hurtling in all directions under the impulse of anything up to 200 horsepower. Many of them are the size of small houses and contain a couple of tons of sophisticated alloys — yet often carry a single passenger. They can travel at a hundred miles an hour, but are lucky if they average forty. In one lifetime they have consumed more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of mankind. The roads to support them, inadequate though they are, cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Source: 1970s, Chapter 3 (The Future of Transport) in Profiles of the Future (7th printing, 1972)

War , Travel , History , Support

“Even though you were once a goddess, Kalidasa’s heaven was only an illusion.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 11 “The Silent Princess” (p. 67)

“Khedron was content with the order of things as it was. True, he might upset that order from time to time—but only by a little. He was a critic, not a revolutionary. On the placidly flowing river of time, he wished only to make a few ripples; he shrank from diverting its course.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 7 (p. 44)

Time

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

Arthur C. Clarke

"Sir Arthur's Quotations" http://www.clarkefoundation.org/about-sir-arthur/sir-arthurs-quotations/, The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.
Disputed

Law , Nature

“The vendors seemed comical, so intent were they on their slivers of meaningless profit, all unaware of the desolate ages that lay in their own near future, their own imminent deaths.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 26

Death , Age , Future

“If children have interests then education happens.”

Arthur C. Clarke

As quoted in Ted Talk "The child-driven education" http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html by Sugata Mitra (2012)
2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

Children , Education

“Somewhere back at the beginning I was chosen to be Jester, and there is only one Jester at a time in Diaspar. Most people think that is one too many.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 5 (p. 33)

People , Thinking , Time

“Others, one suspects, are afraid that the crossing of space, and above all contact with intelligent but nonhuman races, may destroy the foundations of their religious faith. They may be right, but in any event their attitude is one which does not bear logical examination — for a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”

Arthur C. Clarke

The Exploration of Space (1951)
1950s

Truth , Faith , Intelligence

“The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But 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.”

Arthur C. Clarke

As quoted in "Humanity will survive information deluge — Sir Arthur C Clarke" in OneWorld South Asia (5 December 2003) http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/74591/1
2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

Wisdom , Age , Knowledge , Thinking

“The Ramans do everything in threes.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama (1972)
1970s

“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.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967)
1960s

Science

“Through long and bitter experience, Rajasinghe had learned never to trust first impressions, but also never to ignore them.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 2 “The Engineer” (p. 10)

Learning

“We always thought the living earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 28

Life , Beauty , Learning

“It is later than you think. May it not be true for this Sundial.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Inscription for a Sundial at the University of Moratuwa Sri Lanka (1996) http://www.ent.mrt.ac.lk/~rohan/career/projects/sundial/sundial.html
1990s

Thinking

“What is becoming more interesting than the myths themselves has been the study of how the myths were constructed from sparse or unpromising facts—indeed, sometimes from no facts—in a kind of mute conspiracy of longing, very rarely under anybody’s conscious control.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 19

Study

“They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge … no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command … But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Profiles of the Future (1962)
1960s

God , Imagination , Knowledge , Universe

“After a while Hilvar did his best to steer the conversation away from these meaningless morasses of theology in order to concentrate on the ascertainable facts.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 13 (p. 100)

“I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad, or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind? And, although I do not necessarily agree with the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin's advocacy of evolution as a major proof of the glory of God, de Chardin's attitude is both logical and inspiring. A creator who laid the foundations for the entire future at the beginning of time is far more awesome than a clumsy tinkerer who constantly modifies his creations and throws away entire species in the process.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids, essay for journal Science, pp 1532-3 (5 June 1998)
1990s

God , People , Imagination , Intelligence

“Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.”

Arthur C. Clarke

The Odyssey File (1984), also quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 128
1980s

Sex , Reading