Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.
I've been saying for a long time that I'm hoping to find intelligent life in Washington.
I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.
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.
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. Perhaps the adjective 'elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!
I'm quite fond of the writer who told a beginning author, "If you've got a message, use Western Union. "
. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
We always thought the living Earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.
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.
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.
Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias - boredom.
I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarius and we're skeptical.
Science is the only religion of mankind.
Some things have eternal value, and compassion is one of them. I hope we never lose that. Compassion for humans as well as animals.
Others, one suspects, are afraid that the crossing of space , and above all contact with intelligent but nonhuman races, may destroy the foundations of their religious faith. They may be right, but in any event their attitude is one which does not bear logical examination for a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
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.
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.
When the Sun shrinks to a dull red dwarf, it will not be dying. It will just be starting to live and everything that has gone before will merely be a prelude to its real history.
Mars is the next frontier, what the Wild West was, what America was 500 years ago. It's time to strike out anew. . . . Mars is where the action is for the next thousand years. . . . The characteristic of human nature, and perhaps our simian branch of the family, is curiosity and exploration. When we stop doing that, we won't be humans anymore. I've seen far more in my lifetime than I ever dreamed. Many of our problems on Earth can only be solved by space technology. . . . The next step is in space. It's inevitable.