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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.

-Arthur C. Clarke

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It Is Really Quite

Arthur C. Clarke

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

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

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

I'm Sometimes Asked How I Would Like To Be Remembered. I've Had A Diverse Career As A Writer, Underwater Explorer, Space Promoter And Science Populariser. Of All These, I Want To Be Remembered Most As A Writer - One Who Entertained Readers, And, Hopefully, Stretched Their Imagination As Well.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Now I'm A Scientific Expert; That Means I Know Nothing About Absolutely Everything.

We Cannot Predict The New Forces, Powers, And Discoveries That Will Be Disclosed To Us When We Reach The Other Planets And Set Up New Laboratories In Space. They Are As Much Beyond Our Vision Today As Fire Or Electricity Would Be Beyond The Imagination Of A Fish.

The Future Is Not To Be Forecast, But Created.

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

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.

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.

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.

Only Small Minds Are Impressed By Large Numbers.

Religion Is A Byproduct Of Fear.

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

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

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

But He Knew Well Enough That Any Man In The Right Circumstances Could Be Dehumanised By Panic.

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

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.

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.

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.

Religion Is The Most Malevolent Of All Mind Viruses.

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

Intelligent Life

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.

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

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.

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

Space Can Be Mapped And Crossed And Occupied Without Definable Limit; But It Can Never Be Conquered. When Our Race Has Reached Its Ultimate Achievements, And The Stars Themselves Are Scattered No More Widely Than The Seed Of Adam, Even Then We Shall Still Be Like Ants Crawling On The Face Of The Earth. The Ants Have Covered The World, But Have They Conquered It - For What Do Their Countless Colonies Know Of It, Or Of Each Other?

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?

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

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!

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.

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

No Trilogy Should Have More Than Four Books.

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

My Favorite Definition Of An Intellectual: 'someone Who Has Been Educated Beyond His/her Intelligence'.

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

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.

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)

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

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.

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?

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.

When Beauty Is Universal, It Loses Its Power To Move The Heart, And Only Its Absence Can Produce Any Emotional Effect.

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.

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.

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.

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

No One Of Intelligence Resents The Inevitable.

The Information Age Has Been Driven And Dominated By Technopreneurs. We Now Have To Apply These Technologies In Saving Lives, Improving Livelihoods And Lifting Millions Of People Out Of Squalor, Misery And Suffering. In Other Words, Our Focus Must Now Move From The Geeks To The Meek.

If Children Have Interests, Then Education Happens.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good Morning, Doctors. I Have Taken The Liberty Of Removing Windows 95 From My Hard Drive.

I Don't Believe In God But I'm Very Interested In Her.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

The Truth, As Always, Will Be Far Stranger.

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

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

Training Was One Thing, Reality Another.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Space Is What Stops Everything From Happening In The Same Place.

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.

Any Technology Distinguishable From Magic Is Insufficiently Advanced.

Advanced Technology

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.

The Space Elevator Will Be Built About 50 Years After Everyone Stops Laughing.

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 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.

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

We Stand Now At The Turning Point Between Two Eras. Behind Us Is A Past To Which We Can Never Return...

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

... Chemistry Is A Trade For People Without Enough Imagination To Be Physicists.

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

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

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

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.

Excessive Interest In Pathological Behavior Was Itself Pathological

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Civilization Will Reach Maturity Only When It Learns To Value Diversity Of Character And Of Ideas.

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.

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

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

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

The Piece Of Equipment I'm Most Found Off Is My Telescope. The Other Night I Had A Superb View Of The Moon.

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.

Now I Understand,” Said The Last Man.

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.

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.

I Am Unable To Distinguish Clearly Between Your Religious Ceremonies And Apparently Identical Behavior At The Sporting And Cultural Functions You Have Transmitted To Me.

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.

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 Limits Of The Possible Can Only Be Defined By Going Beyond Them Into The Impossible.

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 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.

Absolutely No Religious Rites Of Any Kind, Relating To Any Religious Faith, Should Be Associated With My Funeral.

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

Only Feeble Minds Are Paralyzed By Facts.

Science Is The Only Religion Of Mankind.

Any Smoothly Functioning Technology Will Have The Appearance Of Magic.

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

In All The Universe There Is Nothing More Precious Than Mind.

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

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]

The Shuttle Is To Space Flight What Lindbergh Was To Commercial Aviation.

What We Need Is A Machine That Will Let Us See The Other Guy's Point Of View.

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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

If Such A Thing Had Happened Once, It Must Surely Have Happened Many Times In This Galaxy Of A Hundred Billion Suns.

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

A Wise Man Once Said That All Human Activity Is A Form Of Play. And The Highest Form Of Play Is The Search For Truth, Beauty And Love. What More Is Needed? Should There Be A ‘meaning’ As Well, That Will Be A Bonus? If We Waste Time Looking For Life’s Meaning, We May Have No Time To Live — Or To Play.

Beauty And Love

Science Fiction Does Not Attempt To Predict. It Extrapolates. It Just Says, "what If?" Not What Will Be? Because You Can Never Predict What Will Happen, Particularly In Politics And Economics. You Can To Some Extent Predict In The Technological Sphere - Flying, Space Travel, But Even There We Missed Badly On Some Things, Like Computers. No One Imagined The Incredible Impact Of Computers, Even Though Robot Brains Of Various Kinds But The Idea That One Day Every House Would Have A Computer In Every Room And That One Day We'd Have Computers Built Into Our Clothing, Nobody Ever Thought Of That.

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

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.

Our Own Grandchildren May Demonstrate That-sometimes- Gigantic Is Beautiful.

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

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

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.

If Man Can Live In Manhattan, He Can Live Anywhere.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Am An Optimist. Anyone Interested In The Future Has To Be Otherwise He Would Simply Shoot Himself.

'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.

Never Attribute To Malevolence What Is Merely Due To Incompetence

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

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

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?

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.

The Goal Of The Future Is Full Unemployment, So We Can Play. That's Why We Have To Destroy The Present Politico-economic System.

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

Science Demands Patience.

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

When One Has To Ask, "am I Really In Love?" The Answer Is Always "no".

Guns Are The Crutches Of The Impotent.

The Only Real Problem In Life Is What To Do Next.

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

It Must Be Wonderful To Be Seventeen, And To Know Everything.

Thought Provoking

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

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.

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

Perhaps, As Some Wit Remarked, The Best Proof That There Is Intelligent Life In Outer Space Is The Fact It Hasn't Come Here. Well, It Can't Hide Forever - One Day We Will Overhear It.

Science Fiction Seldom Attempts To Predict The Future. More Often Than Not, It Tries To Prevent The Future.

Science Fiction

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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Cameron Mathison

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