"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
— Arthur C. Clarke (Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible)

"My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.'"
— Arthur C. Clarke

"It may be that our role on this planet
is not to worship God--but to create him."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
— Arthur C. Clarke

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

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"Science is the only religion of mankind."
— Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End)

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"What was more, they had taken the first step towrd genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

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

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself."
— Arthur C. Clarke

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

"How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth", when it is cleary "Ocean"."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

". . . 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."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion"
— Arthur C. Clarke

"In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again.

"
— Arthur C. Clarke

" “Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”"
— Arthur C. Clarke

"For if not true, they are well imagined..."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"Humor was the enemy of desire."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little consolation that it was always the thirteenth that actuslly happened."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

"We must assume that creatures whose machines still function after three million years may build a society equally long-lasting."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

"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. "
— Arthur C. Clarke

"El futuro no es ya lo que solía ser."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"La única posibilidad de descubrir los límites de lo posible es aventurarse un poco más allá de ellos, hacia lo imposible."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2061)

"He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2061)

"Almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2061)

"Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

". . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

"..the happy hum of humanity."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"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.

"
— Arthur C. Clarke

"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."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"Toda tecnología lo suficientemente avanzada es indistinguible de la magia."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"What is human memory?" Manning asked. He gazed at the air as he spoke, as if lecturing an invisible audience - as perhaps he was. "It certainly is not a passive recording mechanism, like a digital disc or a tape. It is more like a story-telling machine. Sensory information is broken down into shards of perception, which are broken down again to be stored as memory fragments. And at night, as the body rests, these fragments are brought out from storage, reassembled and replayed. Each run-through etches them deeper into the brain's neural structure. And each time a memory is rehearsed or recalled it is elaborated. We may add a little, lose a little, tinker with the logic, fill in sections that have faded, perhaps even conflate disparate events.

"In extreme cases, we refer to this as confabulation. The brain creates and recreates the past, producing, in the end, a version of events that may bear little resemblance to what actually occurred. To first order, I believe it's true to say that everything I remember is false."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"But as the ill-fated _Discovery_ had shown so well, all human plans were subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two)

"I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her. "
— Arthur C. Clarke