Quotes from book
The Light of Other Days

The Light of Other Days
Arthur C. Clarke

The Light of Other Days is a 2000 science fiction novel written by Stephen Baxter based on a synopsis by Arthur C. Clarke, which explores the development of wormhole technology to the point where information can be passed instantaneously between points in the spacetime continuum.

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“If the WormCam had shown nothing else, he thought, it was this, with pitiless clarity: that the lives of most humans had been miserable and short, deprived of freedom and joy and comfort, their brief moments in the light reduced to sentences to be endured.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

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

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy’s point of view.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 5

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Science demands patience.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

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

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