Arthur C. Clarke: Trending quotes

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“The best proof that there’s intelligent life in outer space is the fact that it hasn’t come here.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Disputed

“The fact was that he suffered from an incurable malady which, it seemed, attacked only Homo sapiens among all the intelligent races of the universe. That disease was religious mania.
Throughout the earlier part of its history, the human race had brought forth an endless succession of prophets, seers, messiahs, and evangelists who convinced themselves and their followers that to them alone were the secrets of the universe revealed. Some of them succeeded in establishing religions which survived for many generations and influenced billions of men; others were forgotten even before their deaths.
The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, not the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions, each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 13 (p. 99)

“There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.”

Arthur C. Clarke

As quoted in Values of the Wise : Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 31
2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

“He had discharged his destiny; now, perhaps, he could begin to live.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 25 (p. 187)

“If the house is to be demolished tomorrow anyhow, people seem to feel, we may as well burn the furniture today. None of our problems are insoluble…But it seems clear that to prevail we humans will have to act with a smartness and selflessness that has so far eluded us during our long and tangled history.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 4

“There was no substitute for reality; one should be aware of imitations.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 23 “Moondozer” (p. 129)

“SETI is probably the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Seti@Home Donor List (2006) http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donorlist.php <br class="br">2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

“We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)

“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.”

Arthur C. Clarke

The Exploration of Space (1951), p. 111
1950s

“As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun. Well, I actually don't feel a day older than 89!”

Arthur C. Clarke

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

“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.”

Arthur C. Clarke

The Exploration of Space (1951), p. 187
1950s

“Just as the human memory is not a passive recorder but a tool in the construction of the self, so history has never been a simple record of the past, but a means of shaping peoples.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

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

“I am unable to distinguish clearly between your religious ceremonies and apparently identical behavior at the sporting and cultural functions you have transmitted to me.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 16 “Conversations with Starglider” (p. 94)

“We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)

“Maybe those nihilist philosophers are right; maybe this is all we can expect of the universe, a relentless crushing of life and spirit, because the equilibrium state of the cosmos is death…”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

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

“A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 6

“Clarke's Fourth Law: For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Profiles of the Future (1999, London: Victor Gollancz) p. 143
On Clarke's Laws

“There was only one thing of which he could be certain now. Boredom would not be a serious problem for a considerable time to come.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 11 (pp. 77-78)

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

Arthur C. Clarke

As quoted in An Enchanted Life : An Adept's Guide to Masterful Magick (2001) by Patricia Telesco, p. 135
2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

“I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives — pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge — when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics.”

Arthur C. Clarke

"Richard Wakefield" in Rama II (1989)
1980s