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Using Material Ferried Up By Rockets, It Would Be Possible To Construct A "space Station" In ... Orbit. The Station Could Be Provided With Living Quarters, Laboratories And Everything Needed For The Comfort Of Its Crew, Who Would Be Relieved And Provisioned By A Regular Rocket Service. (1945)

-Arthur C. Clarke

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Using Material Ferried Up

Arthur C. Clarke

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Using Material Ferried Up By Rockets, It Would Be Possible To Construct A "space Station" In ... Orbit. The Station Could Be Provided With Living Quarters, Laboratories And Everything Needed For The Comfort Of Its Crew, Who Would Be Relieved And Provisioned By A Regular Rocket Service. (1945)

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More From Arthur C. Clarke

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

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!

'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.

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!"

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

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.

Humor Was The Enemy Of Desire.

Religion Is A Byproduct Of Fear.

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.

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

If Children Have Interests, Then Education Happens.

Training Was One Thing, Reality Another.

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?

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

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

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

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

Science Fiction

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

'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.

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

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

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

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

Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal.

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.

Any Smoothly Functioning Technology Will Have The Appearance Of Magic.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Now I Understand,” Said The Last Man.

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

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

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

Intelligent Life

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Only Small Minds Are Impressed By Large Numbers.

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

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.

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.

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.

Guns Are The Crutches Of The Impotent.

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

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.

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]

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

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

Science Fiction

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

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.

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

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.

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 Future Is Not To Be Forecast, But Created.

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

Only Feeble Minds Are Paralyzed By Facts.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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.

No One Of Intelligence Resents The Inevitable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Religion Is The Most Malevolent Of All Mind Viruses.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Excessive Interest In Pathological Behavior Was Itself Pathological

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.

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

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?

Science Demands Patience.

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 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.

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Any Technology Distinguishable From Magic Is Insufficiently Advanced.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

No Trilogy Should Have More Than Four Books.

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.

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?

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.

Never Attribute To Malevolence What Is Merely Due To Incompetence

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.

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

Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic.

Possible And Impossible

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David Ben-Gurion

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