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The Shuttle Is To Space Flight What Lindbergh Was To Commercial Aviation.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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The Shuttle Is To

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

Understanding the Quote: "the shuttle is to space flight what lindbergh was to commercial aviation...."

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

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

Lessons From the Quote

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

About Arthur C. Clarke

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

Actionable Takeaways

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

Closing Thoughts

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

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Topic
Moon
Space Flight
Aviation
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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.
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I Don't Believe In God But I'm Very Interested In Her.
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When A Distinguished But Elderly Scientist States That Something Is Possible, He Is Almost Certainly Right. When He States That Something Is Impossible, He Is Very Probably Wrong. Perhaps The Adjective 'elderly' Requires Definition. In Physics, Mathematics, And Astronautics It Means Over Thirty; In The Other Disciplines, Senile Decay Is Sometimes Postponed To The Forties. There Are, Of Course, Glorious Exceptions; But As Every Researcher Just Out Of College Knows, Scientists Of Over Fifty Are Good For Nothing But Board Meetings, And Should At All Costs Be Kept Out Of The Laboratory!
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Whether We Are Based On Carbon Or On Silicon Makes No Fundamental Difference We Should Each Be Treated With Appropriate Respect.
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Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal.
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Spaceships
Theory
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Good Morning, Doctors. I Have Taken The Liberty Of Removing Windows 95 From My Hard Drive.
Morning
Taken
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Never Attribute To Malevolence What Is Merely Due To Incompetence
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Three
Done
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Technology
Magic
Advanced Technology
The Realisation That Our Small Planet Is Only One Of Many Worlds Gives Mankind The Perspective It Needs To Realise Sooner That Our Own World Belongs To All Its Creatures.
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Giving
Perspective
God Said, 'cancel Program Genesis.' The Universe Ceased To Exist.
Program
Said
Genesis
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Artist
Solitude
Mind
Only Small Minds Are Impressed By Large Numbers.
Science
Technology
Numbers
Any Path To Knowledge Is A Path To God-or Reality, Whichever Word One Prefers To Use
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Use
Path
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Blood
Wish
Fiction
Any Smoothly Functioning Technology Will Have The Appearance Of Magic.
Technology
Magic
Theatre
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.
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Fear
Dark
Overhead, Without Any Fuss, The Stars Were Going Out.
Stars
Going Out
Overhead
Then He [the Star Child] Waited, Marshaling His Thoughts And Brooding Over His Still Untested Powers. For Though He Was Master Of The World, He Was Not Quite Sure What To Do Next. But He Would Think Of Something.
Stars
Children
Thinking
I Would Defend The Liberty Of Consenting Adult Creationists To Practice Whatever Intellectual Perversions They Like In The Privacy Of Their Own Homes; But It Is Also Necessary To Protect The Young And Innocent.
Death
Home
Practice
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.
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Destiny
Boys
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Long
Firsts
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Optimist
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Men
Race
Numbers
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.
Real
Thinking
Chaos
But He Knew Well Enough That Any Man In The Right Circumstances Could Be Dehumanised By Panic.
Men
Panic
Enough
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.
Intelligent
Space
Forever
Behind Every Man Now Alive Stand Thirty Ghosts, For That Is The Ratio By Which The Dead Outnumber The Living.
Men
Alive
Ratios
The More Wonderful The Means Of Communication, The More Trivial, Tawdry, Or Depressing Its Contents Seemed To Be.
Depressing
Communication
Mean
We Over Estimate Technology In The Short Term And Under Estimate Technology In The Long Term.
Technology
Long
Term
We Stand Now At The Turning Point Between Two Eras. Behind Us Is A Past To Which We Can Never Return...
Past
Two
Eras
No One Of Intelligence Resents The Inevitable.
Inevitable
Resent
The Object Of Teaching A Child Is To Enable The Child To Get Along Without The Teacher. We Need To Educate Our Children For Their Future, Not Our Past.
Teacher
Children
Teaching
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]
Book
Dedication
Three
Once You Can Reproduce A Phenomenon, You Are Well On The Way To Understanding It.
Understanding
Statistics
Way
I Have Great Faith In Optimism As A Guiding Principle, If Only Because It Offers Us The Opportunity Of Creating A Self-fulfilling Prophecy.
Opportunity
Guiding Principles
Self
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.
Simple
People
Tragedy
I Want To Be Remembered Most As A Writer - One Who Entertained Readers, And, Hopefully, Stretched Their Imagination As Well.
Imagination
Want
Reader
If The House Is To Be Demolished Tomorrow Anyhow, People Seem To Feel, We May As Well Burn The Furniture Today. None Of Our Problems Are Insoluble... But It Seems Clear That To Prevail We Humans Will Have To Act With A Smartness And Selflessness That Has So Far Eluded Us During Our Long And Tangled History.
Long
People
Tangled
I Sometimes Think That The Universe Is A Machine Designed For The Perpetual Astonishment Of Astronomers.
Thinking
Machines
Astonishment
When You Finally Understand The Universe, It Will Not Only Be Stranger Than You Imagine, It Will Be Stranger Than You Can Imagine.
Stranger
Imagine
Universe
It Was One Thing To Have Guessed It, Another To Have Had That Guess Confirmed Beyond Possibility Of Refutation.
Statistics
Possibility
Refutation
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.
Stars
Lying
Thinking
Creationism, Perhaps The Most Pernicious Of The Intellectual Perversions Now Afflicting The American Public.
Intellectual
Creationism
Pernicious
. . . The Newspapers Of Utopia, He Had Long Ago Decided, Would Be Terribly Dull.
Long Ago
Would Be
Dull
I Think In The Long Run The Money That S Been Put Into The Space Program Is One Of The Best Investments This Country Has Ever Made . . .this Is A Downpayment On The Future Of Mankind. It's As Simple As That.
Running
Country
Simple
The Greatest Tragedy In Mankind's Entire History May Be The Hijacking Of Morality By Religion. However Valuable-even Necessary-that May Have Been In Enforcing Good Behavior On Primitive Peoples, Their Association Is Now Counterproductive. Yet At The Very Moment When They Should Be Decoupled, Sanctimonious Nitwits Are Calling For A Return To Morals Based On Superstition.
Tragedy
Calling
Hijacking
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.
Believe
Thinking
Self
As His Body Became More And More Defenseless, So His Means Of Offense Became Steadily More Frightful.
Mean
Body
Offense
The Best Proof Of Intelligent Life In Space Is That It Hasn't Come Here.
Intelligent
Space
Proof
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.
Technology
Thinking
Magic
That's One Of Those Meaningless And Unanswerable Questions The Mind Keeps Returning To Endlessly, Like The Tongue Exploring A Broken Tooth.
Broken
Mind
Teeth
You Can't Have It Both Ways. You Can't Have Both Free Will And A Benevolent Higher Power Who Protects You From Yourself.
Way
Free Will
Protect You
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.
Real
Men
Thinking
I Have A Fantasy Where Ted Turner Is Elected President But Refuses Because He Doesn't Want To Give Up Power.
Giving Up
Hype
President
There Were Some Things That Only Time Could Cure. Evil Men Could Be Destroyed, But Nothing Could Be Done With Good Men Who Were Deluded.
Men
Evil
Good Man
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.
Long
Sloth
Doe
Magic's Just Science That We Don't Understand Yet.
Magic
Until We Get Rid Of Religion, We Won't Be Able To Conduct The Search For God.
Able
They Had Not Yet Attained The Stupefying Boredom Of Omnipotence; Their Experiments Did Not Always Succeed.
Omnipotence
Boredom
Succeed
You Don't Believe In Organized Religion, Yet A Major Theme In So Many Of Your Works Seems To Be A Quest For God.
Believe
Religion
Quests
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.
Change
Ideas
People
'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.
Lying
Sea
Forever
Civilization Will Reach Maturity Only When It Learns To Value Diversity Of Character And Of Ideas.
Character
Maturity
Civilization
The Success Of A Science Fiction Writer Is If He Can Write A Good Read.
Writing
Science Fiction
Anything That Is Theoretically Possible Will Be Achieved In Practice, No Matter What The Technical Difficulties Are, If It Is Desired Greatly Enough.
Science
Technology
Practice
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.
Believe
Past
Men
Sometimes I Think We're Alone In The Universe, And Sometimes I Think We're Not. In Either Case The Idea Is Quite Staggering.
Science
Thinking
Ideas
Politicians Should Read Science Fiction, Not Westerns And Detective Stories.
Science
Political
Fiction
It Has Yet To Be Proven That Intelligence Has Any Survival Value.
Good Life
Intelligent
Intelligence
I Don't Pretend We Have All The Answers. But The Questions Are Certainly Worth Thinking About.
Writing
Thinking
Questions And Answers
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.
Childhood
Gullible
Possibility
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.
Elderly
Twenties
Would Be
The Difference Between Machines And Human Beings Is That Human Beings Can Be Reproduced By Unskilled Labour.
Technology
Differences
Machines
When One Has To Ask, "am I Really In Love?" The Answer Is Always "no".
Answers
Asks
Space Can Be Mapped And Crossed And Occupied Without Definable Limit; But It Can Never Be Conquered.
Space
Limits
But Please Remember: This Is Only A Work Of Fiction. The Truth, As Always, Will Be Far Stranger.
Fiction
Remember
Stranger
A Man Who Grows That Much Hair,' Critics Were Fond Of Saying, 'must Have A Lot To Hide.
Men
Hair
Critics
Science Fiction Seldom Attempts To Predict The Future. More Often Than Not, It Tries To Prevent The Future.
Trying
Fiction
Science Fiction
Can The Synthesis Of Man And Machine Ever Be Stable, Or Will The Purely Organic Component Become Such A Hindrance That It Has To Be Discarded?
Men
Machines
Synthesis
Why, Robert Singh Often Wondered, Did We Give Our Hearts To Friends Whose Life Spans Are So Much Shorter Than Our Own?
Heart
Giving
Singh
My Objection To Organized Religion Is The Premature Conclusion To Ultimate Truth That It Represents.
Conclusion
Organized
Ultimate Truth
Astronomy, As Nothing Else Can Do, Teaches Men Humility.
Humility
Men
Astronomy
To Be A Science Fiction Writer You Must Be Interested In The Future And You Must Feel That The Future Will Be Different And Hopefully Better Than The Present. Although I Know That Most - That Many Science Fiction Writings Have Been Anti-utopias. And The Reason For That Is That It's Much Easier And More Exciting To Write About A Really Nasty Future Than A - Placid, Peaceful One.
Writing
Peaceful
Different
The Goal Of The Future Is Full Unemployment, So We Can Play. That's Why We Have To Destroy The Present Politico-economic System.
Play
Goal
Unemployment
A Single Test Which Proves Some Piece Of Theory Wrong Is More Valuable Than A Hundred Tests Showing That Idea Might Be True.
Ideas
Pieces
Might
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.]
Communication
Science
Years
I Doubt If There Is A Single Field Of Study So Theoretical, So Remote From What Is Laughingly Called Everyday Life, That It May Not One Day Produce Something That Will Shake The World.
Doubt
Everyday
One Day
When All Else Failed, You Had To Rely On Eyeball Intrumentation.
Statistics
Eyeballs
Rely
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.
Relationship
Secret
Encounters
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