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I'm Quite Fond Of The Writer Who Told A Beginning Author, "if You've Got A Message, Use Western Union."
-Arthur C. Clarke
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I'm Quite Fond Of

Arthur C. Clarke
...
I'm Quite Fond Of The Writer Who Told A Beginning Author, "if You've Got A Message, Use Western Union."

Understanding the Quote: "i'm quite fond of the writer who told a beginning author, "if..."

This quote by Arthur C. Clarke reflects deeply on the theme of western. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Western, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Arthur C. Clarke interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke is celebrated for insightful thoughts on western and motivation. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Western
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The Intelligent Minority Of This World Will Mark 1 January 2001 As The Real Beginning Of The 21st Century And The Third Millennium.
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Civilization Will Reach Maturity Only When It Learns To Value Diversity Of Character And Of Ideas.
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Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal.
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Utopia Was Here At Last: Its Novelty Had Not Yet Been Assailed By The Supreme Enemy Of A Ll Utopias - Boredom.
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Using Material Ferried Up By Rockets, It Would Be Possible To Construct A "space Station" In ... Orbit. The Station Could Be Provided With Living Quarters, Laboratories And Everything Needed For The Comfort Of Its Crew, Who Would Be Relieved And Provisioned By A Regular Rocket Service. (1945)
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I'm Surprised At Some Technological Development, And The Realization That Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic. I Think The Cd-rom Is The Best Example Of That. The Idea Of Having A Whole Symphony, Or Opera, Or Novel In A Little Piece Of Plastic Is Pretty Amazing.
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You Don't Believe In Organized Religion, Yet A Major Theme In So Many Of Your Works Seems To Be A Quest For God.
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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!
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Behind Every Man Now Alive Stand Thirty Ghosts, For That Is The Ratio By Which The Dead Outnumber The Living.
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The Truth, As Always, Will Be Far Stranger.
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Religion Is A By-product Of Fear. For Much Of Human History It May Have Been A Necessary Evil, But Why Was It More Evil Than Necessary? Isn’t Killing People In The Name Of God A Pretty Good Definition Of Insanity?
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You Will Find Men Like Him In All Of The World's Religions. They Know That We Represent Reason And Science, And, However Confident They May Be In Their Beliefs, They Fear That We Will Overthrow Their Gods. Not Necessarily Through Any Deliberate Act, But In A Subtler Fashion. Science Can Destroy A Religion By Ignoring It As Well As By Disproving Its Tenets. No One Ever Demonstrated, So Far As I Am Aware, The Nonexistance Of Zeus Or Thor, But They Have Few Followers Now.
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The One Fact About The Future Of Which We Can Be Certain Is That It Will Be Utterly Fantastic.
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I Will Not Be Afraid Because I Understand ... And Understanding Is Happiness.
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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.
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It Has Yet To Be Proven That Intelligence Has Any Survival Value.
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Sometimes I Think We're Alone In The Universe, And Sometimes I Think We're Not. In Either Case The Idea Is Quite Staggering.
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It Is Really Quite Amazing By What Margins Competent But Conservative Scientists And Engineers Can Miss The Mark, When They Start With The Preconceived Idea That What They Are Investigating Is Impossible.
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It Will Be Possible In A Few More Years To Build Radio Controlled Rockets Which Can Be Steered Into Such Orbits Beyond The Limits Of The Atmosphere And Left To Broadcast Scientific Information Back To The Earth. A Little Later, Manned Rockets Will Be Able To Make Similar Flights With Sufficient Excess Power To Break The Orbit And Return To Earth. (1945) [predicting Communications Satellites.]
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The Greatest Tragedy In Mankind's Entire History May Be The Hijacking Of Morality By Religion.
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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.
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Religion Is A Byproduct Of Fear.
I Don't Pretend We Have All The Answers. But The Questions Are Certainly Worth Thinking About.
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You Can't Have It Both Ways. You Can't Have Both Free Will And A Benevolent Higher Power Who Protects You From Yourself.
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It Is Vital To Remember That Information - In The Sense Of Raw Data - Is Not Knowledge, That Knowledge Is Not Wisdom, And That Wisdom Is Not Foresight. But Information Is The First Essential Step To All Of These.
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Training Was One Thing, Reality Another.
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I Also Believe - And Hope - That Politics And Economics Will Cease To Be As Important In The Future As They Have Been In The Past; The Time Will Come When Most Of Our Present Controversies On These Matters Will Seem As Trivial, Or As Meaningless, As The Theological Debates In Which The Keenest Minds Of The Middle Ages Dissipated Their Energies. Politics And Economics Are Concerned With Power And Wealth, Neither Of Which Should Be The Primary, Still Less The Exclusive, Concern Of Full-grown Men.
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It May Be That Our Role On This Planet Is Not To Worship God - But To Create Him.
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The Only Way To Define Your Limits Is By Going Beyond Them.
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The Moment When One First Meets A Great Work Of Art Has An Impact That Can Never Again Be Recaptured.
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I Sometimes Think That The Universe Is A Machine Designed For The Perpetual Astonishment Of Astronomers.
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The Rash Assertion That "god Made Man In His Own Image" Is Ticking Like A Time Bomb At The Foundation Of Many Faiths.
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Only Feeble Minds Are Paralyzed By Facts.
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I Don't Think There Is Such A Thing As As A Real Prophet. You Can Never Predict The Future. We Know Why Now, Of Course; Chaos Theory, Which I Got Very Interested In, Shows You Can Never Predict The Future.
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The Time Was Fast Approaching When Earth, Like All Mothers, Must Say Farewell To Her Children.
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There's A Passage About 'rivers Of Molten Rock That Wound Their Way... Until They Cooled And Lay Like Twisted Dragon-shapes Vomited From The Tormented Earth.' That's A Perfect Description: How Did Tolkien Know, A Quarter Century Before Anyone Ever Saw A Picture Of Io? Talk About Nature Imitating Art.
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Look, Whispered Chuck, And George Lifted His Eyes To Heaven. (there Is Always A Last Time For Everything.) Overhead, Without Any Fuss, The Stars Were Going Out.
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The Universe Must Be Full Of Voices, Calling From Star To Star In A Myriad Tongues. One Day We Shall Join That Cosmic Conversation.
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Every Age Has Its Dreams, Its Symbols Of Romance. Past Generations Were Moved By The Graceful Power Of The Great Windjammers, By The Distant Whistle Of Locomotives Pounding Through The Night, By The Caravans Leaving On The Golden Road To Samarkand, By Quinqueremes Of Nineveh From Distant Ophir . . . Our Grandchildren Will Likewise Have Their Inspiration-among The Equatorial Stars. They Will Be Able To Look Up At The Night Sky And Watch The Stately Procession Of The Ports Of Earth-the Strange New Harbors Where The Ships Of Space Make Their Planetfalls And Their Departures.
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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.
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One Orbit, With A Radius Of 42,000 Kilometers, Has A Period Of Exactly 24 Hours. A Body In Such An Orbit, If Its Plane Coincided With That Of The Earth's Equator, Would Revolve With The Earth And Would Thus Be Stationary Above The Same Spot On The Planet. It Would Remain Fixed In The Sky Of A Whole Hemisphere ... [to] Provide Coverage To Half The Globe, And For A World Service Three Would Be Required, Though More Could Be Readily Utilized. (1945) [predidicting Geosynchronous Communication Satellites]
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The More Wonderful The Means Of Communication, The More Trivial, Tawdry, Or Depressing Its Contents Seemed To Be.
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Attempting To Define Science Fiction Is An Undertaking Almost As Difficult, Though Not So Popular, As Trying To Define Pornography... In Both Pornography And Sf, The Problem Lies In Knowing Exactly Where To Draw The Line.
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The Person One Loves Never Really Exists, But Is A Projection Focused Through The Lens Of The Mind Onto Whatever Screen It Fits With Least Distortion.
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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.
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The Realisation That Our Small Planet Is Only One Of Many Worlds Gives Mankind The Perspective It Needs To Realise Sooner That Our Own World Belongs To All Its Creatures.
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What Is Becoming More Interesting Than The Myths Themselves Has Been The Study Of How The Myths Were Constructed From Sparse Or Unpromising Facts Indeed, Sometimes From No Facts In A Kind Of Mute Conspiracy Of Longing, Very Rarely Under Anybody's Conscious Control.
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Politicians Should Read Science Fiction, Not Westerns And Detective Stories.
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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.
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I Want To Be Remembered Most As A Writer - One Who Entertained Readers, And, Hopefully, Stretched Their Imagination As Well.
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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.
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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.
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Religion Is The Most Malevolent Of All Mind Viruses.
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In Fact, One Of The Arguments For Searching For Intelligent Life In Space, Elsewhere, Is That We Have No Evidence That Intelligence Has Any Survival Value. The Most Successful Creatures On This Planet Are The Cockroaches. They've Been Around, What Is It, 100 Million Years Or So And I Suspect They'll Still Be There 100 Million Years In The Future. Maybe Intelligence Is An Evolutionary Aberration Which Dooms Its Possessors In The Way Armor May Have Doomed Some Of The Dinosaurs.
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I Don't Believe In Astrology; I'm A Sagittarius And We're Skeptical.
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To Find Anything Comparable With Our Forthcoming Ventures Into Space, We Must Go Back Far Beyond Columbus, Far Beyond Odysseus-far, Indeed, Beyond The First Ape-man. We Must Contemplate The Moment, Now Irrevocably Lost In The Mists Of Time, When The Ancestor Off All Of Us Came Crawling Out Of The Sea.
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Space Can Be Mapped And Crossed And Occupied Without Definable Limit; But It Can Never Be Conquered.
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When All Else Failed, You Had To Rely On Eyeball Intrumentation.
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. . . The Newspapers Of Utopia, He Had Long Ago Decided, Would Be Terribly Dull.
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Before The Current Decade Ends, Fee-paying Passengers Will Be Experiencing Suborbital Flights Aboard Privately Funded Vehicles. . . . It Won't Be Too Long Before Bright Young Men And Women Set Their Eyes On Careers In Earth Orbit And Say: "i Want To Work 200 Kilometers From Home-straight Up!"
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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.
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If Such A Thing Had Happened Once, It Must Surely Have Happened Many Times In This Galaxy Of A Hundred Billion Suns.
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The Phenomenon Of Ufo Doesn't Say Anything About The Presence Of Intelligence In Space. It Just Shows How Rare It Is Here On The Earth.
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The Entire Sweep Of Human History From The Dark Ages Into The Unknown Future Was Considerably Less Important At The Moment Than The Question Of A Certain Girl And Her Feelings Toward Him.
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Floyd Could Imagine A Dozen Things That Could Go Wrong; It Was Little Consolation That It Was Always The Thirteenth That Actually Happened.
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Space Is What Stops Everything From Happening In The Same Place.
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All Explorers Are Seeking Something They Have Lost. It Is Seldom That They Find It, And More Seldom Still That The Attainment Brings Them Greater Happiness Than The Quest.
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I'm Sure The Universe Is Full Of Intelligent Life. It's Just Been Too Intelligent To Come Here.
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It Was One Thing To Have Guessed It, Another To Have Had That Guess Confirmed Beyond Possibility Of Refutation.
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Don't Mess Up The Environment Until You're Quite Sure What You're Doing.
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If There Are Any Gods Whose Chief Concern Is Man, They Can't Be Very Important Gods.
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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.
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Moses Kaldor Had Always Loved Mountains; They Made Him Feel Nearer To The God Whose Nonexistence He Still Sometimes Resented.
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Human Judges Can Show Mercy. But Against The Laws Of Nature, There Is No Appeal.
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How Inappropriate To Call This Planet Earth When It Is Quite Clearly Ocean.
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What We Need Is A Machine That Will Let Us See The Other Guy's Point Of View.
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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic.
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There's No Real Objection To Escapism, In The Right Places... We All Want To Escape Occasionally. But Science Fiction Is Often Very Far From Escapism, In Fact You Might Say That Science Fiction Is Escape Into Reality... It's A Fiction Which Does Concern Itself With Real Issues: The Origin Of Man; Our Future. In Fact I Can't Think Of Any Form Of Literature Which Is More Concerned With Real Issues, Reality.
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I Have Never Grown Up, But I Will Never Stop Growing.
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Absolutely No Religious Rites Of Any Kind, Relating To Any Religious Faith, Should Be Associated With My Funeral.
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New Ideas Pass Through Three Periods: 1) It Can't Be Done. 2) It Probably Can Be Done, But It's Not Worth Doing. 3) I Knew It Was A Good Idea All Along!
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A Man Who Grows That Much Hair,' Critics Were Fond Of Saying, 'must Have A Lot To Hide.
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If Man Survives For As Long As The Least Successful Of The Dinosaurs-those Creatures Whom We Often Deride As Nature's Failures-then We May Be Certain Of This: For All But A Vanishingly Brief Instant Near The Dawn Of History, The Word 'ship' Will Mean- 'spaceship.'
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The Fact That We Have Not Yet Found The Slightest Evidence For Life - Much Less Intelligence - Beyond This Earth Does Not Surprise Or Disappoint Me In The Least. Our Technology Must Still Be Laughably Primitive, We May Be Like Jungle Savages Listening For The Throbbing Of Tom-toms While The Ether Around Them Carries More Words Per Second Than They Could Utter In A Lifetime.
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Listening
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A Faith That Cannot Survive Collision With The Truth Is Not Worth Many Regrets.
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Regret
No Trilogy Should Have More Than Four Books.
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Our Own Grandchildren May Demonstrate That-sometimes- Gigantic Is Beautiful.
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Two Possibilities Exist: Either We Are Alone In The Universe Or We Are Not. Both Are Equally Terrifying.
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Technology
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Good Morning, Dr. Chandra. This Is Hal. I Am Ready For My First Lesson.
Morning
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Reading Computer Manuals Without The Hardware Is As Frustrating As Reading Sex Manuals Without The Software.
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Reading
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Many, And Some Of The Most Pressing, Of Our Terrestrial Problems Can Be Solved Only By Going Into Space. Long Before It Was A Vanishing Commodity, The Wilderness As The Preservation Of The World Was Proclaimed By Thoreau. In The New Wilderness Of The Solar System May Lie The Future Preservation Of Mankind.
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Future
Space
The Only Real Problem In Life Is What To Do Next.
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Next
Magic's Just Science That We Don't Understand Yet.
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Anything That Is Theoretically Possible Will Be Achieved In Practice, No Matter What The Technical Difficulties Are, If It Is Desired Greatly Enough.
Science
Technology
Practice
Even By The Twenty-second Century, No Way Had Yet Been Discovered Of Keeping Elderly And Conservative Scientists From Occupying Crucial Administrative Positions. Indeed, It Was Doubted If The Problem Ever Would Be Solved.
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Astronomy, As Nothing Else Can Do, Teaches Men Humility.
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Men
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If Man Can Live In Manhattan, He Can Live Anywhere.
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Now I Understand,” Said The Last Man.
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Sometimes A Decision Has To Be Made By A Single Individual, Who Has The Authority To Enforce It. That's Why You Need A Captain. You Can't Run A Ship By A Committee-at Least Not All The Time.
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The Goal Of The Future Is Full Unemployment, So We Can Play. That's Why We Have To Destroy The Present Politico-economic System.
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We Seldom Stop To Think That We Are Still Creatures Of The Sea, Able To Leave It Only Because, From Birth To Death, We Wear The Water-filled Space Suits Of Our Skins.
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Sea
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Good Morning, Doctors. I Have Taken The Liberty Of Removing Windows 95 From My Hard Drive.
Morning
Taken
Technology
Few Artists Thrive In Solitude And Nothing Is More Stimulating Than The Conflict Of Minds With Similar Interests.
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When Beauty Is Universal, It Loses Its Power To Move The Heart, And Only Its Absence Can Produce Any Emotional Effect.
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Moving
Heart
Finding Intelligent Life Would Encourage People And Also Of Course The Opportunity Of Learning A Tremendous Amount, But This Is A Danger. We Might Be So Overwhelmed With Knowledge And Information, That We Might Be Depressed Or Even Become Suicidal - Because What's The Point If They're Thousands Of Years Ahead Of Us? Why Should We Bother? - Or Become The Ultimate Couch Potatoes.
Suicidal
Intelligent
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My Favorite Definition Of An Intellectual: 'someone Who Has Been Educated Beyond His/her Intelligence'.
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'2001' Was Written In An Age Which Now Lies Beyond One Of The Great Divides In Human History; We Are Sundered From It Forever By The Moment When Neil Armstrong And Buzz Aldrin Stepped Out On To The Sea Of Tranquility. Now History And Fiction Have Become Inexorably Intertwined.
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Forever
I Have Encountered A Few "creationists" And Because They Were Usually Nice, Intelligent People, I Have Been Unable To Decide Whether They Were Really Mad Or Only Pretending To Be Mad. If I Was A Religious Person, I Would Consider Creationism Nothing Less Than Blasphemy. Do Its Adherents Imagine That God Is A Cosmic Hoaxer Who Has Created The Whole Vast Fossil Record For The Sole Purpose Of Misleading Humankind?
Religious
Nice
Intelligent
I Doubt If There Is A Single Field Of Study So Theoretical, So Remote From What Is Laughingly Called Everyday Life, That It May Not One Day Produce Something That Will Shake The World.
Doubt
Everyday
One Day
Excessive Interest In Pathological Behavior Was Itself Pathological
Behavior
Interest
Please Help Keep The World Clean: Others May Wish To Use It. Logic Is A Systematic Method Of Coming To The Wrong Conclusion With Confidence. The Only Place Success Comes Before Work Is A Dictionary Politicians Should Read Science Fiction, Not Westerns And Detective Stories.
Wish
Detectives
Fiction
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.
Beautiful
Butterfly
Wings
A Single Test Which Proves Some Piece Of Theory Wrong Is More Valuable Than A Hundred Tests Showing That Idea Might Be True.
Ideas
Pieces
Might
There Were Some Things That Only Time Could Cure. Evil Men Could Be Destroyed, But Nothing Could Be Done With Good Men Who Were Deluded.
Men
Evil
Good Man
When I Start On A Book, I Have Been Thinking About It And Making Occasional Notes For Some Time... So I Have Lots Of Theme, Locale, Subjects And Technical Ideas... I Don't Worry About Long Periods Of Not Doing Anything. I Know My Subconscious Is Busy.
Book
Thinking
Ideas
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.
Fear
Real
Believe
There Is Hopeful Symbolism In The Fact That Flags Do Not Wave In A Vacuum.
Symbolism
Hopeful
Cynical
But Please Remember: This Is Only A Work Of Fiction. The Truth, As Always, Will Be Far Stranger.
Fiction
Remember
Stranger
If The House Is To Be Demolished Tomorrow Anyhow, People Seem To Feel, We May As Well Burn The Furniture Today. None Of Our Problems Are Insoluble... But It Seems Clear That To Prevail We Humans Will Have To Act With A Smartness And Selflessness That Has So Far Eluded Us During Our Long And Tangled History.
Long
People
Tangled
Since Women Are Better At Producing Babies, Presumably Nature Has Given Men Some Talent To Compensate. But For The Moment I Can't Think Of It.
Baby
Men
Thinking
The Dinosaurs Disappeared Because They Could Not Adapt To Their Changing Environment. We Shall Disappear If We Cannot Adapt To An Environment That Now Contains Spaceships, Computers - And Thermonuclear Weapons.
Dinosaurs
Weapons
Changing Environment
Humor Was The Enemy Of Desire.
Enemy
Desire
The Future Is Not To Be Forecast, But Created.
Forecasts
The Success Of A Science Fiction Writer Is If He Can Write A Good Read.
Writing
Science Fiction
Death Focuses The Mind On The Things That Really Matter: Why Are We Here, And What Should We Do?
Mind
Matter
Should
Any Technology Distinguishable From Magic Is Insufficiently Advanced.
Technology
Magic
Advanced Technology
Getting Information From The Internet Is Like Getting A Glass Of Water From The Niagara Falls.
Fall
Glasses
Water
Science Fiction Seldom Attempts To Predict The Future. More Often Than Not, It Tries To Prevent The Future.
Trying
Fiction
Science Fiction
The Greatest Tragedy In Mankind's Entire History May Be The Hijacking Of Morality By Religion. However Valuable-even Necessary-that May Have Been In Enforcing Good Behavior On Primitive Peoples, Their Association Is Now Counterproductive. Yet At The Very Moment When They Should Be Decoupled, Sanctimonious Nitwits Are Calling For A Return To Morals Based On Superstition.
Tragedy
Calling
Hijacking
No One Of Intelligence Resents The Inevitable.
Inevitable
Resent
Isaac Asimov Is, In Reality, Based On Something I Had Invented A Few Years Previously.
Reality
Years
Isaac
The Crossing Of Space ... May Do Much To Turn Men's Minds Outwards And Away From Their Present Tribal Squabbles. In This Sense, The Rocket, Far From Being One Of The Destroyers Of Civilisation, May Provide The Safety-value That Is Needed To Preserve It.
Men
Space
Safety
Until We Get Rid Of Religion, We Won't Be Able To Conduct The Search For God.
Able
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.
Real
Dwarves
Dying
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.
Stars
Truth
Science
A Precondition For Being A Science Fiction Writer Other Than An Interest In The Future Is That, An Interest - At Least An Understanding Of Science, Not Necessarily A Science Degree But You Must Have A Feeling For The Science And Its Possibilities And Its Impossibilities, Otherwise You're Writing Fantasy. Now, Fantasy Is Also Fine, But There Is A Distinction, Although No One's Ever Been Able To Say Just Where The Dividing Lines Come.
Writing
Understanding
Feelings
We Stand Now At The Turning Point Between Two Eras. Behind Us Is A Past To Which We Can Never Return...
Past
Two
Eras
My Objection To Organized Religion Is The Premature Conclusion To Ultimate Truth That It Represents.
Conclusion
Organized
Ultimate Truth
I'm Quite Fond Of The Writer Who Told A Beginning Author, "if You've Got A Message, Use Western Union."
Western
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.
Earth
Planets
Savagery
Seti Is Probably The Most Important Quest Of Our Time , And It Amazes Me That Governments And Corporations Are Not Supporting It Sufficiently.
Government
Important
Quests
And Because, In All The Galaxy, They Had Found Nothing More Precious Than Mind, They Encouraged Its Dawning Everywhere. They Became Farmers In The Fields Of Stars; They Sowed, And Sometimes They Reaped. And Sometimes, Dispassionately, They Had To Weed.
Weed
Stars
Mind
In My Life I Have Found Two Things Of Priceless Worth - Learning And Loving. Nothing Else - Not Fame, Not Power, Not Achievement For Its Own Sake - Can Possible Have The Same Lasting Value. For When Your Life Is Over, If You Can Say 'i Have Learned' And 'i Have Loved,' You Will Also Be Able To Say 'i Have Been Happy.
Loving Life
Two
Achievement
Invade Me Now, My Ruthless Friend, And Make Me Cower In The Dark. Remind Me That I'm All Alone And Draw Upon My Face Your Mark. How Is It That You Capture Me, When All My Thoughts Deny Your Force? Is It The Reptile In My Brain That Lets Your Terror Run Its Course? Baseless Fear Undoes Us All Despite Our Quest For Lofty Goals. We Would-be Galahads Don't Die, Fear Just Freezes All Our Souls. It Keeps Us Mute When Feeling Love, Reminding Us What We Might Lose. And If By Chance We Meet Success, Fear Tells Us Which Safe Route To Choose.
Running
Fear
Dark
As His Body Became More And More Defenseless, So His Means Of Offense Became Steadily More Frightful.
Mean
Body
Offense
Overhead, Without Any Fuss, The Stars Were Going Out.
Stars
Going Out
Overhead
The Best Proof Of Intelligent Life In Space Is That It Hasn't Come Here.
Intelligent
Space
Proof
Creationism, Perhaps The Most Pernicious Of The Intellectual Perversions Now Afflicting The American Public.
Intellectual
Creationism
Pernicious
In All The Universe There Is Nothing More Precious Than Mind.
Mind
Universe
The Best Measure Of A Man's Honesty Isn't His Income Tax Return. It's The Zero Adjust On His Bathroom Scale.
Zero
Funny Life
Business
The Object Of Teaching A Child Is To Enable The Child To Get Along Without The Teacher. We Need To Educate Our Children For Their Future, Not Our Past.
Teacher
Children
Teaching
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.
Communication
Years
America
It Was The Mark Of A Barbarian To Destroy Something One Could Not Understand.
Barbarians
Mark
I Am An Optimist. Anyone Interested In The Future Has To Be Otherwise He Would Simply Shoot Himself.
Optimistic
Optimist
In The Long Run, There Are No Secrets. In Science. The Universe Will Not Cooperate In A Cover-up.
Running
Long
Secret
Deep Beneath The Surface Of The Sun, Enormous Forces Were Gathering. At Any Moment, The Energies Of A Million Hydrogen Bombs Might Burst Forth In The Awesome Explosion.... Climbing At Millions Of Miles Per Hour, An Invisible Fireball Many Times The Size Of Earth Would Leap From The Sun And Head Out Across Space.
Space
Climbing
Hydrogen Bomb
In This Single Galaxy Of Ours There Are Eighty-seven Thousand Million Suns. [...] In Challenging It, You Would Be Like Ants Attempting To Label And Classify All The Grains Of Sand In All The Deserts Of The World. [...] It Is A Bitter Thought, But You Must Face It. The Planets You May One Day Possess. But The Stars Are Not For Man.
Stars
Men
Challenges
The Difference Between Machines And Human Beings Is That Human Beings Can Be Reproduced By Unskilled Labour.
Technology
Differences
Machines
'the Devil In The Dark' Impressed Me Because It Presented The Idea, Unusual In Science Fiction Then And Now, That Something Weird, And Even Dangerous, Need Not Be Malevolent. That Is A Lesson That Many Of Today's Politicians Have Yet To Learn.
Fear
Dark
Ideas
Then He [the Star Child] Waited, Marshaling His Thoughts And Brooding Over His Still Untested Powers. For Though He Was Master Of The World, He Was Not Quite Sure What To Do Next. But He Would Think Of Something.
Stars
Children
Thinking
Now I'm A Scientific Expert; That Means I Know Nothing About Absolutely Everything.
Mean
Experts
Knows
Once You Can Reproduce A Phenomenon, You Are Well On The Way To Understanding It.
Understanding
Statistics
Way
Any Path To Knowledge Is A Path To God-or Reality, Whichever Word One Prefers To Use
Reality
Use
Path
To Be A Science Fiction Writer You Must Be Interested In The Future And You Must Feel That The Future Will Be Different And Hopefully Better Than The Present. Although I Know That Most - That Many Science Fiction Writings Have Been Anti-utopias. And The Reason For That Is That It's Much Easier And More Exciting To Write About A Really Nasty Future Than A - Placid, Peaceful One.
Writing
Peaceful
Different
The Shuttle Is To Space Flight What Lindbergh Was To Commercial Aviation.
Moon
Space Flight
Aviation
I Sometimes Wonder How We Spent Leisure Time Before Satellite Television And Internet Came Along…and Then I Realise That I Have Spent More Than Half Of My Life In The ‘dark Ages’!
Life
Time
Dark
Never Attribute To Malevolence What Is Merely Due To Incompetence
Incompetence
Attributes
Malevolence
He Found It Both Sad And Fascinating That Only Through An Artificial Universe Of Video Images Could She Establish Contact With The Real World.
Real
Video
World
I Think In The Long Run The Money That S Been Put Into The Space Program Is One Of The Best Investments This Country Has Ever Made . . .this Is A Downpayment On The Future Of Mankind. It's As Simple As That.
Running
Country
Simple
The Space Elevator Will Be Built About 50 Years After Everyone Stops Laughing.
Years
Space
Laughing
We Have To Abandon The Idea That Schooling Is Something Restricted To Youth. How Can It Be, In A World Where Half The Things A Man Knows At 20 Are No Longer True At 40 - And Half The Things He Knows At 40 Hadn't Been Discovered When He Was 20?
Inspirational
Educational
Men
But He Knew Well Enough That Any Man In The Right Circumstances Could Be Dehumanised By Panic.
Men
Panic
Enough
The Earth Would Only Have To Move A Few Million Kilometers Sunward-or Starward-for The Delicate Balance Of Climate To Be Destroyed. The Antarctic Icecap Would Melt And Flood All Low-lying Land; Or The Oceans Would Freeze And The Whole World Would Be Locked In Eternal Winter. Just A Nudge In Either Direction Would Be Enough.
Lying
Ocean
Moving
They Will Have Time Enough, In Those Endless Aeons, To Attempt All Things, And To Gather All Knowledge... No Gods Imagined By Our Minds Have Ever Possessed The Powers They Will Command... But For All That, They May Envy Us, Basking In The Bright Afterglow Of Creation; For We Knew The Universe When It Was Young.
Envy
Mind
May
No Utopia Can Ever Give Satisfaction To Everyone, All The Time. As Their Material Conditions Improve, Men Raise Their Sights And Become Discontented With Power And Possessions That Once Would Have Seemed Beyond Their Wildest Dreams. And Even When The External World Has Granted All It Can, There Still Remain The Searchings Of The Mind And The Longings Of The Heart.
Dream
Heart
Men
Somewhere In Me Is A Curiosity Sensor. I Want To Know What's Over The Next Hill. You Know, People Can Live Longer Without Food Than Without Information. Without Information, You'd Go Crazy.
Crazy
People
Curiosity
The Limits Of The Possible Can Only Be Defined By Going Beyond Them Into The Impossible.
Inspirational
Motivational
Positive
It Is Not Easy To See How The More Extreme Forms Of Nationalism Can Long Survive When Men Have Seen The Earth In Its True Perspective As A Single Small Globe Against The Stars.
Stars
Patriotic
Men
Across The Gulf Of Centuries, The Blind Smile Of Homer Is Turned Upon Our Age. Along The Echoing Corridors Of Time, The Roar Of The Rockets Merges Now With The Creak Of The Wind-taut Rigging. For Somewhere In The World Today, Still Unconscious Of His Destiny, Walks The Boy Who Will Be The First Odysseus Of The Age Of Space.
Future
Destiny
Boys
There Is A Special Sadness In Achievement, In The Knowledge That A Long-desired Goal Has Been Attained At Last, And That Life Must Now Be Shaped Toward New Ends.
Hope
Writing
Ambition
Science Is The Only Religion Of Mankind.
Mankind
God Said, 'cancel Program Genesis.' The Universe Ceased To Exist.
Program
Said
Genesis
I Don't Believe In God But I'm Very Interested In Her.
Atheist
Believe
Insightful
As Three Laws Were Good Enough For Newton, I Have Modestly Decided To Stop There.
Science
Law
Three
Science Demands Patience.
Demand
Isn't Killing People In The Name Of God A Pretty Good Definition Of Insanity?
Atheist
Names
People
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.
Death
Home
Practice
If I Didn't Exist, I Would Have Invented Myself.
Ifs
Can The Synthesis Of Man And Machine Ever Be Stable, Or Will The Purely Organic Component Become Such A Hindrance That It Has To Be Discarded?
Men
Machines
Synthesis
I Suspect That Religion Is A Necessary Evil In The Childhood Of Our Particular Species. And That's One Of The Interesting Things About Contact With Other Intelligences: We Could See What Role, If Any, Religion Plays In Their Development. I Think That Religion May Be Some Random By-product Of Mammalian Reproduction. If That's True, Would Non-mammalian Aliens Have A Religion?
Thinking
Play
Evil
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