Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

You know, we’re not used to secrecy up here. It’s not encouraged. We all have to work together to keep alive. Secrecy is corrosive, Professor, bad for morale.

Science demands patience.

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

Christine would surely be talking, even if she had only an ape as audience. To her, any silence was as great a challenge as a blank canvas; it had to be filled with the sound of her own voice.

No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.

Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

"["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn."

...science fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish that it could.

Somewhere back at the beginning I was chosen to be Jester, and there is only one Jester at a time in Diaspar. Most people think that is one too many.

Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?

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.

I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.

Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.