Quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesnt want to give up power.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.

I dont pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

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.

The best measure of a mans honesty isnt his income tax return. Its the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

“One by one she would cut through the orbits of Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion... worlds bearing the names of gods and goddesses who had vanished only yesterday, as time was counted here.”

“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.”

“In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”

“Magics just science that we dont understand yet.”

“Im sure the universe is full of intelligent life. Its just been too intelligent to come here.”

“Now Im a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”

“The planet had been slowed down - but as its mass was a sextillion times greater than the ships, the change in its orbit was far too small to be detectable. The time had not yet come when Man could leave his mark upon the Solar System.”

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is clearly Ocean.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 sadness.”

“Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” - John W. Campbell”

“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.”

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”