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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.

-Arthur C. Clarke

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No Utopia Can Ever

Arthur C. Clarke

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Any Smoothly Functioning Technology Will Have The Appearance Of Magic.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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)

If Children Have Interests, Then Education Happens.

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

Humor Was The Enemy Of Desire.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Intelligent Life

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.

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

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

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.

Why, Robert Singh Often Wondered, Did We Give Our Hearts To Friends Whose Life Spans Are So Much Shorter Than Our Own?

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.

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

The Future Is Not To Be Forecast, But Created.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Religion Is The Most Malevolent Of All Mind Viruses.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Questions And Answers

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.

Science Is The Only Religion Of Mankind.

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

Science Fiction

. . . 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.

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]

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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.

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

Never Attribute To Malevolence What Is Merely Due To Incompetence

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

No One Of Intelligence Resents The Inevitable.

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.

Excessive Interest In Pathological Behavior Was Itself Pathological

Any Technology Distinguishable From Magic Is Insufficiently Advanced.

Advanced Technology

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

Science Fiction

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.

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

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

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

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]

If I Didn't Exist, I Would Have Invented Myself.

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

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.

God Said, 'cancel Program Genesis.' The Universe Ceased To Exist.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Training Was One Thing, Reality Another.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Religion Is A Byproduct Of Fear.

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

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.

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.

Sometimes When I'm In A Bookstore Or Library, I Am Overwhelmed By All The Things That I Do Not Know. Then I Am Seized By A Powerful Desire To Read All The Books, One By One.

Utopia Was Here At Last: Its Novelty Had Not Yet Been Assailed By The Supreme Enemy Of A Ll Utopias - Boredom.

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

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.

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.

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

Guns Are The Crutches Of The Impotent.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A Well-stocked Mind Is Safe From Boredom.

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’!

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

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

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

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

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.

Creationism, Perhaps The Most Pernicious Of The Intellectual Perversions Now Afflicting The American Public.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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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