Quotes About Arthur C. Clarke

Curnow had once remarked that Dr. Chandra had the sort of physique that could only be achieved by centuries of starvation.

And even if it never makes it to the big screen, millions of people have watched a very impressive version of the opening in the box office hit Independence Day. So when/if Childhood's End is finally made into a movie, the popcorn set will undoubtedly think we've ripped off I.D.

wonder if he can feel pain? Bowman thought briefly. Probably not, he told himself; there are no sense organs in the human cortex, after all. The human brain can be operated on without anesthetics. He

We're particularly anxious to get our hands on Pioneer 10—the first man-made object to escape from the Solar System.

Do you believe in ghosts, Dim?" "Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I'm afraid of them. Why do you ask?

I thought this couldn't happen in astronomy. Isn't celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.

They'd all been carefully screened by the F.B.I., so probably not more than half a dozen were active members of the Communist Party.

Didn't somebody once say 'Politics is the art of the possible'?" "Quite true—which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.

President of the Society for Creative Anachronisms.

News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.

Well, that's a relief. You know that I have the greatest possible enthusiasm for this mission." "I'm sure of it. Now please let me have

All we want from Thalassa is a hundred thousand tons of water. Or, to be more specific, ice.

he suffered from an incurable malady which, it seemed, attacked only homo sapiens among all the intelligent races of the universe. That disease was religious mania. Throughout

Oh, yes, safe for humans. Animals too. But there is an exclusion zone.

This is as bad as the Pandora party! It's nothing less than interstellar xenophobia!

Nicole looked around her. "Darkness everywhere," she said, almost to herself. "And somewhere in that darkness—if the word 'somewhere' even has any meaning—there was energy.

about twenty percent of the Lassans caught some kind of virus.

Since their base number system is octal, the range for the comparatives is between one and seven.

Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias—boredom. Perhaps

The Great Bird will take its flight on the back of the great bird, bringing glory to the nest where it was born.

Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting

The gear that they were carrying looked very formidable, but though it was bulky it weighed practically nothing. It was all packed in gravity-polarising containers which neutralised its weight, leaving only inertia to be contended with.

Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson." There

The Man Who Ploughed the Sea First published in Satellite, June 1957 Collected in Tales from the White Hart This story was written in Miami, in 1954. Despite the lapse of time, many of the themes of this story are surprisingly up-to-date, and a few years ago I was amazed to read a description in a scientific journal of a ship-borne device to extract uranium from sea water! I sent a copy of the story to the inventors, and apologised for invalidating their patent.