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Arthur C. Clarke citations
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Arthur Charles Clarke, ou Arthur C. Clarke, né le 16 décembre 1917 à Minehead dans le Somerset au Royaume-Uni et mort le 19 mars 2008 à Colombo au Sri Lanka, est un écrivain de science-fiction, écrivain scientifique, futurologue, présentateur télé, explorateur sous-marin et inventeur britannique.

Il a utilisé des pseudonymes comme Charles Willis et E.G. O'Brien.

✵ 16. décembre 1917 – 19. mars 2008   •   Autres noms Arthur Charles Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Arthur C. Clarke: 224   citations 0   J'aime

Arthur C. Clarke citations célèbres

“C'est donc la fin de l'homme, songea Jan avec une résignation au-delà de la tristesse. Une fin qu'aucun prophète n'avait jamais annoncée, une fin désavouant aussi bien l'optimisme que le pessimisme.
Et néanmoins appropriée : elle avait la sublime inéluctabilité d'un grandiose chef-d'œuvre. Jan avait eu un fugitif aperçu du cosmos et de sa terrifiante immensité, et il savait désormais que l'homme n'y avait pas sa place. Il comprenait enfin la vanité ultime de l'utopie qui l'avait leurré. Il avait rêvé des étoiles. Or, la route qui conduisait aux étoiles bifurquait et la destination à laquelle menait chacune de ses branches était étrangère aux espoirs comme aux craintes des humains.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Les Enfants d'Icare (1953)

“De tous les grands félins, et peut-être de tous les mammifères, le tigre du Bengale est le plus beau.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Le Marteau de Dieu (1993)

“Si vous me pardonnez cette plate comparaison, nous avons déclenché l'alerte à l'incendie et nous n'avons plus qu'à attendre les pompiers. Je ne pense d'ailleurs pas que nous ayons longtemps à attendre.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, La sentinelle, 1951

“La pyramide trônait sur ce plateau creusé dans la montagne avant que la vie soit née dans les eaux de la Terre.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, La sentinelle, 1951

“D'être venu peut-être cent millions d'années trop tard ne me contrariait pas; c'était déjà bien assez d'être venu, tout simplement.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, [Sentinelle]La sentinelle, 1951

“C'était un phare qui tout au long des âges avait signalé patiemment que personne ne l'avaient encore découvert.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, La sentinelle, 1951

Arthur C. Clarke Citations

“Sur la Lune, bien sûr, la distance ne fait pas disparaitre les détails… il n'existe rien de semblable à cette vapeur presque imperceptible qui adoucit et parfois transforme toutes choses lointaines sur la Terre.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, La sentinelle, 1951

distance

“C'est une idée cruelle, mais vous devez la regarder en face. Peut-être votre domination s'étendra-t-elle un jour sur les planètes. Mais les étoiles ne sont pas pour l'Homme.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Les Enfants d'Icare (1953)

idée , hommes

“En vérité la permissivité en matière sexuelle, proche de celle de l'Hindouisme, constituait l'une des différences les plus marquantes entre le Chrislamisme et les religions dont il était issu. Il lui dut certainement une grande part de sa popularité, tant était grand le contraste avec le puritanisme islamique et la morale maladive du Christianisme qui empoisonna la vie de milliards d'hommes et aboutit à cette perversion qu'est le célibat.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Le Marteau de Dieu (1993)

vie , hommes , vérité , religion

“Pourquoi mettent-ils en œuvre des accélérations aussi colossales alors qu'ils ont tout l'espace à leur disposition et qu'ils pourraient prendre tout leur temps pour atteindre leur vitesse de croisière? Ma théorie est la suivante : ils captent d'une façon ou d'une autre l'énergie de champ qui enveloppe les étoiles, ce qui les oblige à effectuer leurs manœuvres de démarrage et d'arrêt à proximité immédiate d'un soleil. Mais tout cela est secondaire…”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Les Enfants d'Icare (1953)

temps , soleil , vitesse

“Je compris alors que je me trouvais devant une chose que rien n'aurait pu égaler dans l'antiquité de ma propre race. Ce n'était pas une bâtisse, mais une machine, qui se défendait au moyen de forces qui défiaient l’Éternité.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, La sentinelle, 1951

“Les plus célèbres merveilles de Mars étaient tellement gigantesques qu'on ne pouvait les admirer vraiment que de l'espace.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Le Marteau de Dieu (1993)

“[…] Voici maintenant venu le temps de reconnaître une faute plus tragique encore. Le refus obstiné de l'Église d'accepter les moyens artificiels de limitation des naissances a gâché des milliards de vies et, ironie du sort, a encouragé les familles trop pauvre pour nourrir les enfants qu'on les obligeait à mettre au monde, à recourir au péché d'avortement.
Cette politique a conduit notre espèce au bord du gouffre. La surpopulation a épuisé les ressources de la planète Terre et pollué tout notre environnement. Dès la fin du XX”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Le Marteau de Dieu (1993)

naissance , sortie , faute , temps

“Dans le premier enthousiasme de ma découverte, j'avais admis sans discussion que cette construction cristalline était le fait d'une race appartenant au passé lointain de la Lune, mais soudain et avec une force implacable, je fus persuadé que cette race était tout aussi étrangère à la Lune que moi-même.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses nouvelles, La sentinelle, 1951

“Les préjugés et les tabous liés à la nourriture régissent fortement le comportement humain et la logique s'avère souvent impuissante à les vaincre. Recycler des excréments dans les champs, en plein air, en les purifiant grâce aux rayons du Soleil, passe encore; mais le faire chez soi, à l'aide de mystérieux appareils électriques, pas question. Pendant des années, les ingénieurs de Fuller argumentèrent en vain :
— Dieu Lui-même serait incapable de voir la différence entre deux atomes de carbone.
Pourtant, la plupart des gens étaient convaincus d'en être capables, eux.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Citations de ses romans, Le Marteau de Dieu (1993)

soleil , Dieu , nourriture , comportement

“On a tendance à nous confondre parce que nous sommes tous deux des auteurs de textes cérébraux où les concepts scientifiques comptent plus que l'action proprement dite.”

Arthur C. Clarke

Ils ont dit, Isaac Asimov

“L’audace—toujours l’audace!”

Arthur C. Clarke

2010: Odyssey Two

Arthur C. Clarke: Citations en anglais

“The Ramans do everything in threes.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke

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

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

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Arthur C. Clarke livre The Fountains of Paradise

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

“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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre The Light of Other Days

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

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

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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

“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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre The Light of Other Days

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

“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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke

Profiles of the Future (1962)
1960s

“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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke

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

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

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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

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

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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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke

Seti@Home Donor List (2006) http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donorlist.php
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.”

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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.”

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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!”

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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.”

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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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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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…”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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.”

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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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke livre 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..”

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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.”

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Arthur C. Clarke

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

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