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
running discovery long
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.
relationship secret encounters
After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.
zero honesty funny-life
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
reality training statistics
Training was one thing, reality another.
morning taken technology
Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive.
stars lying moon
Even if we never reach the stars by our own efforts, in the millions of years that lie ahead it is almost certain that the stars will come to us. Isolationism is neither a practical policy on the national or cosmic scale. And when the first contact with the outer universe is made, one would like to think that Mankind played an active and not merely a passive role-that we were the discoverers, not the discovered.
technology differences machines
The difference between machines and human beings is that human beings can be reproduced by unskilled labour.
believe thinking self
I believe any malevolent supercivilisation would have rapidly self-destructed as we may be in the process of doing ourselves. If we do have contact, physical contact with aliens, I think it will be benign.
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.
fall glasses water
Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.
stars moon goal
The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.
life lonely loneliness
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
believe facts principles
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.
fiction remember stranger
But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.