Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRASwas a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 December 1917
quests lost attainment
All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.
ideas three done
New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!
writing thinking answers
I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.
long-ago would-be dull
. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.
faith truth regret
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
inspirational educational men
We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?
weed stars mind
And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.
giving perspective world
The realisation that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realise sooner that our own world belongs to all its creatures.
way free-will protect-you
You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.
life lonely loneliness
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
mind religion atheism
Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.
men alive ratios
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
future ironic age
This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
atheist names evil
Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?