Arthur C. Clarke

Table of contents

1 (1917 - present) 2 Sourced: 2.1 Clarke's Three Laws 3 Attributed:

(1917 - present)

and

See also: Childhood's End

Sourced:

• "Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!"
  • Source: Electronic Tutors

• I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
  • Source: 1984: Spring (1984)

• "We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return ... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation ... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began."
  • Source: Exploration of Space (1952)

• "Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."
  • Source: Foreword to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Clarke's Three Laws

• 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.
  • Source: the essay Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination, in his book Profiles of the Future (1962); This statement is often referred to as "Clarke's First Law"

• The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  • Source: the essay Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination, in his book Profiles of the Future (1962); This statement is often referred to as "Clarke's Second Law"

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
  • Source: Profiles of the Future (revised edition 1973); The statement is often referred to as "Clarke's Third Law"

Attributed:

• "My favourite definition of 'Intellectual' is: 'A person whose education surpasses their intelligence.'"
  • Clarke may not have been first to say this.

• "The intelligence of the planet is constant, and the population is growing."

• "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

• "If there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they can't be very important gods" /article

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

• "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

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

• "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

• "CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

• "Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."

• "The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale."

• "Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along."

• "This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one."

• "I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.."

• "I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her."

• "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."

• "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 non-existence of Zeus or Thor - but they have few followers now."

• "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

• "The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium."

• "As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying."

• "Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society."

• "We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins."

• "Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software."

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