Quotes from Arthur C. Clarke

He was a picturesque survivor, one of those who had no use for an ordered way of life. When his type vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.

The Cold Equations

They call it the War with the Sky." Bisesa snorted. "That's ridiculous. How can you wage war on an abstraction?" "I suspect that's the point. It means whatever you want it to mean.

Oh, joy of joys! We have found Richard! He is still alive! Just barely, for he is in a deep coma and has a high fever, but he is nevertheless alive.

When you don't know what to do, do nothing.

In the future all history will be noted as BC, before contact, and AC, after contact. For from that first moment when we knew unambiguously that simple chemicals had risen to consciousness and intelligence somewhere else in the vastness of our universe, the past history of our species became only an isolated paradigm, one small and relatively insignificant fragment in the infinite tapestry that depicts the astonishing variety of sentient life.

Someone is walking over your grave.

It'll be symbolic. Let the women dress the way savages dress everywhere—bedeck themselves in old dead parts of birds and animals, smear their faces with colored clay, mash flowers over themselves to conceal their natural stench. The same way they always dress. Now, for Chrissake!

was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand;

Se necesita una educación muy mala para que el daño sea permanente.

Jean thought a little wearily, he filled to perfection the classic recipe for a small boy: "a noise surrounded by dirt.

Allá lejos estaban las montañas, donde moraban el poder y la belleza, donde el trueno sonaba alegremente por encima de los hielos y el aire era claro y penetrante. Allá, cuando la Tierra ya estaba envuelta en sombras, brillaba todavía el sol, transfigurando las cimas. Y ellos sólo podían observar y maravillarse. Nunca escalarían esas alturas.

One of the benefits of Dr. Kreuger's eminence was an unlimited computer budget:

And it may be that no such bridge is possible, and that two such alien forms of consciousness can never coexist. If this is so, then only one of them can inherit the Solar System. Which it will be, not even the Gods know—yet.

The date stamp, she noted, showed 4 B.C.

oh my God - it's full of stars!

entre tandas de incierto dormitar y temerosa espera, estaban naciendo las pesadillas de generaciones aún por ser.

This is only a work of fiction , The Truth as always will be far stranger

mundos que en cualquier otra parte hubiesen sido considerados como planetas por propio derecho, pero que allí eran simplemente satélites de un amo gigante.

parecía ahora desoladoramente primitiva ante los poderes que le estaban llevando a un inimaginable sino.

Oh yes, we once tried to put this thick catsup in a wide-mouth bottle so it would pour easily, and the company almost went broke—the American housewife refused to touch it because the shape of the container had been changed. It has taken us fifteen years to enlarge the neck of the bottle by one quarter of an inch.

But many generations had passed since anyone had had a use for a set of seven-figure logarithms, an atlas of the world, and the score of Sibelius's Seventh Symphony printed, according to the flyleaf, by H. K. Chu & Sons at the City of Pekin in the year AD 2021.

No era el miedo a los abismos galácticos lo que helaba su alma, sino una más profunda inquietud, que brotaba desde el futuro aún por nacer.

Y debido a que en toda la Galaxia no habían encontrado nada más precioso que la Mente, alentaron por doquiera su amanecer. Se convirtieron en granjeros en los campos de las estrellas; sembraron, y a veces cosecharon.