The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

“...science fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish that it could.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Much blood has also been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that COULD happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that COULDN'T happen - though often you only wish that it could.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“The billion-year battle against the force of gravity was over.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Summertime on Icarus First published in Vogue, June 1960, as ‘The Hottest Piece of Real Estate in the Solar System’ Collected in Tales of Ten Worlds When I wrote this story, I certainly never dreamed that one day I would have an asteroid named after me: in 1996 the International Astronomical Union rescued 4923 from anonymity. As a result, I am now the proud absentee landlord of about 100 square kilometres of real estate out around Mars. It doesn’t come anywhere near the Earth, so I’m not worried about Deep Impact type lawsuits.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“I Remember Babylon First published in Playboy, March 1960 Collected in Tales of Ten Worlds This is one of the rare cases where I violated Sam Goldwyn’s excellent rule: ‘If you gotta message, use Western Union.’ This story was a message, five years before the first commercial communications satellite was launched, warning of their possible danger. Apart from some minor political earthquakes, everything in it has since come true.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Last came one of the strange beings from the system of Palador. It was nameless, like all its kind, for it possessed no identity of its own, being merely a mobile but still dependent cell in the consciousness of its race. Though it and its fellows had long been scattered over the galaxy in the exploration of countless worlds, some unknown link still bound them together as inexorably as the living cells in a human body. When a creature of Palador spoke, the pronoun it used was always ‘We’. There was not, nor could there ever be, any first person singular in the language of Palador.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“He felt that strange mingling of kinship and discomfort that all men experience when they gaze thus into the mirror of time.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“He was not the first man, Cliff Leyland told himself bitterly, to know the exact second and the precise manner of his death.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Mankind now faces its ultimate emergency. In such a moment of crisis, is it not right for us to call upon the instinct that has always ensured our survival in the past? A poet in an earlier, almost equally troubled age put it better than I can ever hope to do: WE MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER OR DIE.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Beneath the palm trees Lora waited, watching the sea. Clyde’s boat was already visible as a tiny notch on the far horizon—the only flaw in the perfect mating of sea and sky.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“The Man Who Ploughed the Sea First published in Satellite, June 1957 Collected in Tales from the White Hart This story was written in Miami, in 1954. Despite the lapse of time, many of the themes of this story are surprisingly up-to-date, and a few years ago I was amazed to read a description in a scientific journal of a ship-borne device to extract uranium from sea water! I sent a copy of the story to the inventors, and apologised for invalidating their patent.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Soon after publication ‘Superiority’ was inserted into the Engineering curriculum of MIT—to warn the graduates that the Better is often the enemy of the Good—and the Best can be the enemy of both, as it is always too late.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“I am very proud of the fact that the Apollo-15 crew gave this name to a crater which they drove past in their lunar rover. On their return to earth, they sent me a beautiful 3-D map bearing the inscription: ‘To Arthur Clarke with best personal regards from the crew of Apollo 15 and many thanks for your visions in space.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“History Lesson First published in Startling Stories, May 1949 Collected in Expedition to Earth as ‘Expedition to Earth’ The second of two stories derived from an earlier one, now lost, ‘History Lesson’ is also the first of two stories in which glaciers return to cover the world. In the preface to Expedition to Earth, Clarke notes his discovery of a literally chilling phrase in Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilisation: ‘Civilisation is an interlude between Ice Ages’, and observes ‘the next one is already overdue; perhaps global warming has arrived just in time to save us.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“By mapping out possible futures, as well as a good many improbable ones, the science fiction writer does a great service to the community. He encourages in his readers flexibility of mind, readiness to accept and even welcome change—in one word, adaptability. Perhaps no attribute is more important in this age.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“But many generations had passed since anyone had had a use for a set of seven-figure logarithms, an atlas of the world, and the score of Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony printed, according to the flyleaf, by H. K. Chu & Sons at the City of Pekin in the year AD 2021.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“We obtained another guinea pig, chloroformed it, and sent it through the transmitter. To our delight, it revived. We immediately had it killed and stuffed for the benefit of posterity. You can see it in the museum with the rest of our apparatus.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“It was good to be alive; it was better to be young; it was best of all to be in love.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Nothing in this world is ever really new, yet everything is in some way different from all that has gone before.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that could happen—but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen—though often you only wish that it could.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“But what is science fiction anyway? Attempts to define it will continue as long as people write PhD theses. Meanwhile, I am content to accept Damon Knight’s magisterial: ‘Science Fiction is what I point to and say “That’s science fiction.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Did Scott have poison with him? I doubt it. And if he did, I’m sure he never used it.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“to understand the future, it was necessary to know the past.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Any of you who are familiar with domestic American affairs may know that Florida’s claim to be the Sunshine State is strongly disputed by some of the other forty-seven members of the Union. I don’t suppose New York or Maine or Connecticut are very serious contenders, but the State of California regards the Florida claim as an almost personal affront, and is always doing its best to refute it. The Floridians hit back by pointing to the famous Los Angeles smogs, then the Californians say, with careful anxiety, “Isn’t it about time you had another hurricane?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“That was only the beginning of disaster: now the real tragedy began. Nitric oxides rained from the air, turning the sea to acid. Clouds of soot from incinerated forests darkened the sky, hiding the sun for months. Worldwide, the temperature dropped precipitously, killing off most of the plants and animals that had survived the initial cataclysm. Though some species would linger on for millenniums, the reign of the great reptiles was finally over. The clock of evolution had been reset; the countdown to Man had begun. The date was, very approximately, 65 million BC.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Undoubtedly, I am biased, but among these tales such masterpieces as ‘The Star’, ‘The Crystal Egg’, ‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’, and, above all, ‘The Country of the Blind’ blaze like diamonds amid costume jewellery.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Now my erudite informant has solved at least part of the mystery. ‘The Anticipator’ was written by one Morley Roberts; it was first published in 1898 in The Keeper of the Waters and Other Stories. I probably encountered it in a Doubleday anthology, Travellers in Time (1947), edited by Philip Van Doren Stern. Yet several problems remain. First of all, why was I so convinced that the story was by Wells? I can only suggest—and it seems pretty farfetched, even for my grasshopper mind—that the similarity of words had made me link it subconsciously with ‘The Accelerator’.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Dear Mr Jinx: I’m afraid your idea is not at all original. Stories about writers whose work is always plagiarised even before they can complete it go back at least to H. G. Wells’s ‘The Anticipator’. About once a week I receive a manuscript beginning:”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“What would you have said, Doctor, if someone reported a very dead Himalayan snow leopard mixed up in a tangle of straps and boxes—and holding constant altitude at ninety thousand feet?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“Poul Anderson”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke