Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRASwas a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 December 1917
belief psychological artifacts
Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.
communication years america
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.
intellectual definitions my-favorite
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
science years progress
At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
stars going-out overhead
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
fall glasses water
Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.
stars moon goal
The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.
beautiful butterfly wings
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.
good-life intelligent survival
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
science self moral
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.
religious religion atheism
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.
running discovery long
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
wise men beauty-and-love
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.
discovery space fire
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.