Arthur C. Clarke (Quotes)
@ClarkeQuoteBot
Daily quotes from the Prophet of the Space Age!
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It is impossible to predict the future, and all attempts to do so in any detail appear ludicrous within a very few years.
Civilization cannot exist without new frontiers; it needs them both physically and spiritually.
Psychologically as well as physically, there are no longer any remote places on Earth. When a friend leaves for what was once a foreign country, even if he has no intention of returning, we cannot feel that same sense of irrevocable separation that saddened our forefathers.
A completely open mind would be an empty one, and freedom from all prejudices and preconceptions is an unattainable ideal.
A society based on the replicator would be so completely different from ours that the president debate between capitalism and communism would become quite meaningless. All material possessions would be literally as cheap as dirt.
All the star-borne colonies of the future will be independent, whether they wish it or not. Their liberty will be inviolably protected by time as well as space.
The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic.
Mathematics is only a tool, though an immensely powerful one. No equations, however impressive and complex, can arrive at the truth if the initial assumptions are incorrect.
Probably 99% of human ability has been wholly wasted; even today, those of us who consider ourselves cultured and educated operate for most of our time as automatic machines, and glimpse the profound resources of our minds only once or twice in a lifetime.
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.
Too much imagination is much rarer than too little; when it occurs, it usually involves its unfortunate possessor in frustration and failure—unless he is sensible enough merely to write about his ideas, and not to attempt their realization.
No project which obeys the law of the conservation of energy should be dismissed out of hand.
A change of size always involves a corresponding change of time rate.
The great problem, it seems, is finding a single person who combines sound scientific knowledge—or at least the feel for science—with a really flexible imagination.
As the hierarchy of the universe is slowly disclosed to us, we will have to face this chilling fact: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.
No nation can afford to divert its ablest men into such essentially non-creative, and occasionally parasitic, occupations as law, advertising, and banking. Nor can it afford to squander indefinitely the technical manpower it does possess.
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered.
When all men, wherever they may be, have equal access to the same vast communications network, they will inevitably become citizens of the world, and a major problem of the future will be the preservation of regional characteristics of value and interest.
It is so rare to meet a glimmer of intelligence in what film producers are pleased to call science-fiction movies that one's gratitude tends to overflow.
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