Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

Quotes

• 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.

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

• 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.

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

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

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

• 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.

• It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of 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.

• I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

• The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

• Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

• The difference between machines and human beings is that human beings can be reproduced by unskilled labor.

• 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.

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

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