Background Image

...

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.

-Arthur C. Clarke

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In Fact, One Of

Arthur C. Clarke

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Arthur C. Clarke

Two Possibilities Exist: Either We Are Alone In The Universe Or We Are Not. Both Are Equally Terrifying.

Science Is The Only Religion Of Mankind.

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.

How Inappropriate To Call This Planet Earth When It Is Quite Clearly Ocean.

Perhaps No Other Year Before Or Since 1984 Has Been Awaited With Such Eager Anticipation.

A Well-stocked Mind Is Safe From Boredom.

I've Been Saying For A Long Time That I'm Hoping To Find Intelligent Life In Washington.

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.

Astronomy, As Nothing Else Can Do, Teaches Men Humility.

Our Lifetime May Be The Last That Will Be Lived Out In A Technological Society.

He Was Moving Through A New Order Of Creation, Of Which Few Men Had Ever Dreamed. Beyond The Realms Of Sea And Land And Air And Space Lay The Realms Of Fire, Which He Alone Had Been Privileged To Glimpse. It Was Too Much To Expect That He Would Also Understand.

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.

But Please Remember: This Is Only A Work Of Fiction. The Truth, As Always, Will Be Far Stranger.

A Man Who Grows That Much Hair,' Critics Were Fond Of Saying, 'must Have A Lot To Hide.

Politicians Should Read Science Fiction, Not Westerns And Detective Stories.

People Go Through Four Stages Before Any Revolutionary Development: 1. It's Nonsense, Don't Waste My Time. 2. It's Interesting, But Not Important. 3. I Always Said It Was A Good Idea. 4. I Thought Of It First.

The Moment When One First Meets A Great Work Of Art Has An Impact That Can Never Again Be Recaptured.

Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal.

. . . The Newspapers Of Utopia, He Had Long Ago Decided, Would Be Terribly Dull.

The Universe Must Be Full Of Voices, Calling From Star To Star In A Myriad Tongues. One Day We Shall Join That Cosmic Conversation.

It Has Yet To Be Proven That Intelligence Has Any Survival Value.

The One Fact About The Future Of Which We Can Be Certain Is That It Will Be Utterly Fantastic.

If There Are Any Gods Whose Chief Concern Is Man, They Can't Be Very Important Gods.

The Best Measure Of A Man's Honesty Isn't His Income Tax Return. It's The Zero Adjust On His Bathroom Scale.

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.

Human Judges Can Show Mercy. But Against The Laws Of Nature, There Is No Appeal.

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.

No Communication Technology Has Ever Disappeared, But Instead Becomes Increasingly Less Important As The Technological Horizon Widens.

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.

I Will Not Be Afraid Because I Understand ... And Understanding Is Happiness.

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.

The Best Proof That There's Intelligent Life In The Universe Is That It Hasn't Come Here.

Intelligent Life

Anything That Is Theoretically Possible Will Be Achieved In Practice, No Matter What The Technical Difficulties Are, If It Is Desired Greatly Enough.

When All Else Failed, You Had To Rely On Eyeball Intrumentation.

One Theory Which Can No Longer Be Taken Very Seriously Is That Ufos Are Interstellar Spaceships.

I Can Never Look Now At The Milky Way Without Wondering From Which Of Those Banked Clouds Of Stars The Emissaries Are Coming. If You Will Pardon So Commonplace A Simile, We Have Set Off The Fire Alarm And Have Nothing To Do But To Wait. I Do Not Think We Will Have To Wait For Long.

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.

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.

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)

Some Things Have Eternal Value, And Compassion Is One Of Them. I Hope We Never Lose That. Compassion For Humans As Well As Animals.

The Time Was Fast Approaching When Earth, Like All Mothers, Must Say Farewell To Her Children.

They Had Not Yet Attained The Stupefying Boredom Of Omnipotence; Their Experiments Did Not Always Succeed.

I Sometimes Think That The Universe Is A Machine Designed For The Perpetual Astonishment Of Astronomers.

The Numbers Of Distinct Human Societies Or Nations, When Our Race Is Twice Its Present Age, May Be Far Greater Than The Total Number Of All The Men Who Have Ever Lived Up To The Present Time.

There Is Hopeful Symbolism In The Fact That Flags Do Not Wave In A Vacuum.

The Creation Of Wealth Is Certainly Not To Be Despised, But In The Long Run The Only Human Activities Really Worthwhile Are The Search For Knowledge, And The Creation Of Beauty. This Is Beyond Argument, The Only Point Of Debate Is Which Comes First.

He Found It Both Sad And Fascinating That Only Through An Artificial Universe Of Video Images Could She Establish Contact With The Real World.

Only Feeble Minds Are Paralyzed By Facts.

It Was A Pity That There Was No Radar To Guide One Across The Trackless Seas Of Life. Every Man Had To Find His Own Way, Steered By Some Secret Compass Of The Soul. And Sometimes, Late Or Early, The Compass Lost Its Power And Spun Aimlessly On Its Bearings. Alan Bishop

Sometimes I Think We're Alone In The Universe, And Sometimes I Think We're Not. In Either Case The Idea Is Quite Staggering.

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.

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.]

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.

The Truth, As Always, Will Be Far Stranger.

Never Attribute To Malevolence What Is Merely Due To Incompetence

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.

The Success Of A Science Fiction Writer Is If He Can Write A Good Read.

Science Fiction

What Was More, They Had Taken The First Step Toward Genuine Friendship. They Had Exchanged Vulnerabilities.

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.

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.

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.

As Three Laws Were Good Enough For Newton, I Have Modestly Decided To Stop There.

One Of The Great Tragedies Of Mankind Is That Morality Has Been Hijacked By Religion.

The More Wonderful The Means Of Communication, The More Trivial, Tawdry, Or Depressing Its Contents Seemed To Be.

Those Wanderers Must Have Looked On Earth, Circling Safely In The Narrow Zone Between Fire And Ice, And Must Have Guessed That It Was The Favourite Of The Sun's Children.

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.

I Don't Think There Are Any Secrets To Writing In The - Everybody Has Their Own Techniques. You Must Be Widely Read, That's One Thing, Because You Have To Resolve A Tremendous Amount Of Background Information. Also, You Should Know What The Competition Is Writing, Just So You're Not Wasting Your Time Doing The Same Thing. Unless You Do It Better, Of Course.

All Human Plans [are] Subject To Ruthless Revision By Nature, Or Fate, Or Whatever One Preferred To Call The Powers Behind The Universe.

Few Artists Thrive In Solitude And Nothing Is More Stimulating Than The Conflict Of Minds With Similar Interests.

You Don't Believe In Organized Religion, Yet A Major Theme In So Many Of Your Works Seems To Be A Quest For God.

The Intelligent Minority Of This World Will Mark 1 January 2001 As The Real Beginning Of The 21st Century And The Third Millennium.

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.

No One Of Intelligence Resents The Inevitable.

'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.

When You Finally Understand The Universe, It Will Not Only Be Stranger Than You Imagine, It Will Be Stranger Than You Can Imagine.

Space Can Be Mapped And Crossed And Occupied Without Definable Limit; But It Can Never Be Conquered.

Isn't Killing People In The Name Of God A Pretty Good Definition Of Insanity?

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.

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?

No Trilogy Should Have More Than Four Books.

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?

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.

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!

Dangerous Ideas

Seti Is Probably The Most Important Quest Of Our Time , And It Amazes Me That Governments And Corporations Are Not Supporting It Sufficiently.

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.

Religion Is A Byproduct Of Fear.

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.

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.

Finally, I Would Like To Assure My Many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, And Muslim Friends That I Am Sincerely Happy That The Religion Which Chance Has Given You Has Contributed To Your Peace Of Mind (and Often, As Western Medical Science Now Reluctantly Admits, To Your Physical Well-being). Perhaps It Is Better To Be Un-sane And Happy, Than Sane And Un-happy. But It Is The Best Of All To Be Sane And Happy. Whether Our Descendants Can Achieve That Goal Will Be The Greatest Challenge Of The Future. Indeed, It May Well Decide Whether We Have Any Future.

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.

Almost Any Seat Was Comfortable At One-sixth Of A Gravity.

The Moon Is The First Milestone On The Road To The Stars.

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.

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.

Guns Are The Crutches Of The Impotent.

Once You Can Reproduce A Phenomenon, You Are Well On The Way To Understanding It.

In Accordance With The Terms Of The Clarke-asimov Treaty, The Second-best Science Writer Dedicates This Book To The Second-best Science-fiction Writer. [dedication To Isaac Asimov From Arthur C. Clarke In His Book Report On Planet Three]

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.

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.

The Rash Assertion That "god Made Man In His Own Image" Is Ticking Like A Time Bomb At The Foundation Of Many Faiths.

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.

I Don't Pretend We Have All The Answers. But The Questions Are Certainly Worth Thinking About.

Questions And Answers

A Single Test Which Proves Some Piece Of Theory Wrong Is More Valuable Than A Hundred Tests Showing That Idea Might Be True.

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.

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.

As His Body Became More And More Defenseless, So His Means Of Offense Became Steadily More Frightful.

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.

One Of The Biggest Roles Of Science Fiction Is To Prepare People To Accept The Future Without Pain And To Encourage A Flexibility Of The Mind. Politicians Should Read Science Fiction, Not Westerns And Detective Stories.

I Have Never Grown Up, But I Will Never Stop Growing.

One Can Imagine A Time When Men Who Still Inhabit Organic Bodies Are Regarded With Pity By Those Who Have Passed On To An Infinitely Richer Mode Of Existence, Capable Of Throwing Their Consciousness Or Sphere Of Attention Instantaneously To Any Point On Land, Sea, Or Sky Where There Is A Suitable Sensing Organ. In Adolescence We Leave Childhood Behind; One Day There May Be A Second And More Portentous Adolescence, When We Bid Farewell To The Flesh.

'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.

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.

In The Long Run, There Are No Secrets. In Science. The Universe Will Not Cooperate In A Cover-up.

Now Times Had Changed, And The Inherited Wisdom Of The Past Had Become Folly.

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.

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 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.

The Exploration Of The Planets Is Now Closer To Us In Time Than The Exploration Of Africa By Stanley And Livingstone.

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.

A Faith That Cannot Survive Collision With The Truth Is Not Worth Many Regrets.

The Only Way To Define Your Limits Is By Going Beyond Them.

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.

Judge Me By My Deeds, Though They Are Few, Rather Than My Words, Though They Are Many.

The Greatest Tragedy In Mankind's Entire History May Be The Hijacking Of Morality By Religion.

Magic's Just Science That We Don't Understand Yet.

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.

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.

Belief In God Is Apparently A Psychological Artifact Of Mammalian Reproduction.

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]

The West Needs To Relearn What The Rest Of The World Has Never Forgotten - That There Is Nothing Sinful In Leisure As Long As It Does Not Degenerate Into Mere Sloth.

1. 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. 2. The Only Way Of Discovering The Limits Of The Possible Is To Venture A Little Way Past Them Into The Impossible. 3. Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic.

Impossible Things

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?

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.

Changing Environment

I Have A Fantasy Where Ted Turner Is Elected President But Refuses Because He Doesn't Want To Give Up Power.

My Objection To Organized Religion Is The Premature Conclusion To Ultimate Truth That It Represents.

The Difference Between Machines And Human Beings Is That Human Beings Can Be Reproduced By Unskilled Labour.

Nowhere In Space Will We Rest Our Eyes Upon The Familiar Shapes Of Trees And Plants, Or Any Of The Animals That Share Our World. Whatsoever Life We Meet Will Be As Strange And Alien As The Nightmare Creatures Of The Ocean Abyss, Or Of The Insect Empire Whose Horrors Are Normally Hidden From Us By Their Microscopic Scale.

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.

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?

Behind Every Man Now Alive Stand Thirty Ghosts, For That Is The Ratio By Which The Dead Outnumber The Living.

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.

There Is The Possibility That Humankind Can Outgrow Its Infantile Tendencies, As I Suggested In 'childhood's End.' But It Is Amazing How Childishly Gullible Humans Are.

Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic.

Possible And Impossible

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.

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.

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.

Even If We Never Reach The Stars By Our Own Efforts, In The Millions Of Years That Lie Ahead It Is Almost Certain That The Stars Will Come To Us. Isolationism Is Neither A Practical Policy On The National Or Cosmic Scale. And When The First Contact With The Outer Universe Is Made, One Would Like To Think That Mankind Played An Active And Not Merely A Passive Role-that We Were The Discoverers, Not The Discovered.

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.

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.

Getting Information From The Internet Is Like Getting A Glass Of Water From The Niagara Falls.

I Have Great Faith In Optimism As A Guiding Principle, If Only Because It Offers Us The Opportunity Of Creating A Self-fulfilling Prophecy.

Guiding Principles

I Want To Be Remembered Most As A Writer - One Who Entertained Readers, And, Hopefully, Stretched Their Imagination As Well.

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.

I'm Sure The Universe Is Full Of Intelligent Life. It's Just Been Too Intelligent To Come Here.

Don't Mess Up The Environment Until You're Quite Sure What You're Doing.

Until We Get Rid Of Religion, We Won't Be Able To Conduct The Search For God.

We Over Estimate Technology In The Short Term And Under Estimate Technology In The Long Term.

If An Elderly But Distinguished Scientist Says That Something Is Possible, He Is Almost Certainly Right; But If He Says That It Is Impossible, He Is Very Probably Wrong.

Death Focuses The Mind On The Things That Really Matter: Why Are We Here, And What Should We Do?

. . . 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.

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

I Believe Any Malevolent Supercivilisation Would Have Rapidly Self-destructed As We May Be In The Process Of Doing Ourselves. If We Do Have Contact, Physical Contact With Aliens, I Think It Will Be Benign.

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.

Trying To Predict The Future Is A Discouraging And Hazardous Occupation. If By Some Miracle A Prophet Could Describe The Future Exactly As It Was Going To Take Place, His Predictions Would Sound So Absurd That People Everyone Would Laugh Him To Scorn. The Only Thing We Can Be Sure Of About The Future Is That It Will Be Absolutely Fantastic. So, If What I Say Now Seems To You To Be Very Reasonable, Then I Will Have Failed Completely. Only If What I Tell You Appears Absolutely Unbelievable Have We Any Chance Of Visualizing The Future As It Really Will Happen.

You Can't Have It Both Ways. You Can't Have Both Free Will And A Benevolent Higher Power Who Protects You From Yourself.

Overhead, Without Any Fuss, The Stars Were Going Out.

Whether We Are Based On Carbon Or On Silicon Makes No Fundamental Difference We Should Each Be Treated With Appropriate Respect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Any Path To Knowledge Is A Path To God-or Reality, Whichever Word One Prefers To Use

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.

Floyd Could Imagine A Dozen Things That Could Go Wrong; It Was Little Consolation That It Was Always The Thirteenth That Actually Happened.

Isaac Asimov Is, In Reality, Based On Something I Had Invented A Few Years Previously.

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.'

The Choice, As Wells Once Said, Is The Universe-or Nothing. . . . The Challenge Of The Great Spaces Between The Worlds Is A Stupendous One; But If We Fail To Meet It, The Story Of Our Race Will Be Drawing To Its Close. Humanity Will Have Turned Its Back Upon The Still Untrodden Heights And Will Be Descending Again The Long Slope That Stretches, Across A Thousand Million Years Of Time, Down To The Shores Of The Primeval Sea.

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.

I Don't Believe In Astrology; I'm A Sagittarius And We're Skeptical.

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.

Excessive Interest In Pathological Behavior Was Itself Pathological

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.

It Was The Mark Of A Barbarian To Destroy Something One Could Not Understand.

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.

Moses Kaldor Had Always Loved Mountains; They Made Him Feel Nearer To The God Whose Nonexistence He Still Sometimes Resented.

Reading Computer Manuals Without The Hardware Is As Frustrating As Reading Sex Manuals Without The Software.

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.

Any Technology Distinguishable From Magic Is Insufficiently Advanced.

Advanced Technology

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.

The Best Proof Of Intelligent Life In Space Is That It Hasn't Come Here.

That's One Of Those Meaningless And Unanswerable Questions The Mind Keeps Returning To Endlessly, Like The Tongue Exploring A Broken Tooth.

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!"

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.

It Was One Thing To Have Guessed It, Another To Have Had That Guess Confirmed Beyond Possibility Of Refutation.

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.

Religion Is The Most Malevolent Of All Mind Viruses.

Good Morning, Dr. Chandra. This Is Hal. I Am Ready For My First Lesson.

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!

It May Be That Our Role On This Planet Is Not To Worship God - But To Create Him.

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.

Trending Author

Tommy Lee Jones

Johnny Knoxville

Pamela Anderson

Category