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
book reading writing
I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
science thinking ideas
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
giving-up hype president
I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.
science political fiction
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
intelligent space forever
Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.
future eye home
Before the current decade ends, fee-paying passengers will be experiencing suborbital flights aboard privately funded vehicles. . . . It won't be too long before bright young men and women set their eyes on careers in Earth orbit and say: "I want to work 200 kilometers from home-straight up!"
differences diversity fundamentals
Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
stars patriotic men
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.
symbolism cynical hopeful
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
climbing hydrogen-bomb space
Deep beneath the surface of the Sun, enormous forces were gathering. At any moment, the energies of a million hydrogen bombs might burst forth in the awesome explosion.... Climbing at millions of miles per hour, an invisible fireball many times the size of Earth would leap from the Sun and head out across space.
taken theory spaceships
One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.
art avant-garde stories
Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.
childhood gullible possibility
There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in Childhood's End. But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.
statistics possibility refutation
It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.