Arthur C. Clarke Quotes That Are futuristic, visionary and imaginative

The only way to define your limits is by going beyond them.

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

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving.

Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.

The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.

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

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

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

Using material ferried up by rockets, it would be possible to construct a "space station" in ... orbit. The station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by a regular rocket service. (1945)

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not.

Both are equally terrifying.

Civilization will reach maturity only when it learns to value diversity of character and of ideas.

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.

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.

A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play.

And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.

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 grows out of the other, and we need them all.

Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

The object of teaching a child is to enable the child to get along without the teacher. We need to educate our children for their future, not our past.

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

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done.

2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

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

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?

You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.

It is vital to remember that information - in the sense of raw data - is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.

A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible-indeed, inevitable-the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return.

It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

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.

People go through four stages before any revolutionary development: 1. It's nonsense, don't waste my time. 2. It's interesting, but not important. 3. I always said it was a good idea. 4. I thought of it first.

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

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.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

Across the gulf of centuries, the blind smile of Homer is turned upon our age. Along the echoing corridors of time, the roar of the rockets merges now with the creak of the wind-taut rigging. For somewhere in the world today, still unconscious of his destiny, walks the boy who will be the first Odysseus of the Age of Space.

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.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.

Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.

We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.

Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.

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

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings. Alan Bishop

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]

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 inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.