Quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

“I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.”

“Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who lo...”

“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.”

“Humor was the enemy of desire.”

“What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.”

“Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, ...”

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”

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

“He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of...”

“Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each...”

“...a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.”

“Let us say that you might have become a telepathic cancer, a malignant mentality which in its inevitable dissolution would have poisoned other and greater minds.”

“The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion.”

“Didnt somebody once say Politics is the art of the possible? Quite truewhich is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.”

“That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's c...”

“One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.”

“The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.”

“Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.”

“There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is ...”