Arthur C. Clarke cytaty

strona 3

„Jeśli starszawy, uznany naukowiec mówi, że coś jest możliwe, niemal z pewnością ma rację, lecz jeśli mówi, że to jest niemożliwe, najprawdopodobniej się myli.”

„Bez broni, którą tak często zwracał przeciwko sobie, Człowiek nigdy nie podbiłby świata. Włożył w nią całe swoje umiejętności, ona zaś służyła mu dobrze przez wieki. Jednak teraz – dopóki istnieje broń – Człowiek otrzymuje czas na kredyt.”

„Jedyny sposób, by odkryć granice możliwości, to przekroczyć je i sięgnąć po niemożliwe.”

„Artur Clarke, od dawna członek brytyjskiego towarzystwa astronautycznego i doskonały popularyzator, napisał mnóstwo opowiadań i powieści SF, wykazując znaczną biegłość w rzemiośle i niemałą oryginalność pomysłów (wspomnieliśmy np. o jego nowelkach „metafizycznych” Gwiazda i 9 bilionów imion Boga’). Napisał też książeczkę na poły fantastyczną i na poły futurologiczną, w której okazuje się rzetelnym i pomysłowym informatorem i przewodnikiem po państwie możliwości naukowotechnicznych.”

„Rok 2010: Opracowano pierwsze generatory kwantowe (wyłapujące energię kosmiczną). Dostępne w formie jednostek przenośnych oraz odpowiednie do zapotrzebowań gospodarstw domowych, które produkują moc rzędu kilku kilowatów, stają się niewyczerpanym źródłem energii. Duże elektrownie zostają wyłączone – wraz z demontażem sieci kończy się era słupów wysokiego napięcia.”

„Każdą rewolucyjną ideę można podsumować trzema fazami – to niemożliwe, nie będę marnować czasu – to możliwe, ale nie warte zachodu – mówiłem przez cały czas, że to był dobry pomysł.”

„Nie chciałbym się upierać, Dave, ale ja jestem niezdolny do popełniania omyłek.”

„Dostatecznie zaawansowana technologia nie różni się od magii.”

„Po raz pierwszy tak wiele uwagi poświęca się przyszłości, co zakrawa trochę na ironię, bo przyszłości możemy wcale nie mieć.”

“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

“The thing’s hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God!”

“I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.”

“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.”

“Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”

“Humor was the enemy of desire.”

“… the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.”

“The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.”

“Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias—boredom.”

“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.”

“If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.”

“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

“But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.”

“["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction thennow, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.”

“The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.”

“When in doubt, say nothing and move on.”

“Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological”

“Now I can rejoice that I knew you, rather than mourn because I lost you.”

“When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you will be shining the brightest star of the northern skies — Vega of the Lyre, twenty-six years away at the speed of light, near enough to the point of no return for us short-lived creatures. Past this blue-white beacon, fifty times as brilliant as our sun, we may send our minds and bodies, but never our hearts.
For no man will ever turn homewards beyond Vega, to greet again those he knew and loved on Earth.”

“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.”

“… 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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“If children have interests then education happens.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”