Quote

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.

Arthur C. Clarke

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Arthur C. Clarke
Age: 90 †
Born: 1917
Born: December 16
Died: 2008
Died: March 19
Engineer
Explorer
Film Writer
Inventor
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Scientist
Screenwriter
Writer
Minehead
Somerset
Arthur Charles Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke
Charles Willis
Arthur Clarke
Ideas
Impossible
Phrases
Every
Possible
Reactions
Good
Funny
Revolutionary
Idea
Accomplish
Summed
Science
Completely
Evoke
Three
Along
Stages
Seems
Worth
Rebellious
May
Stage
Reaction

More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist.
Arthur C. Clarke
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It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Now I understand,” said the last man.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Guns are the crutches of the impotent.
Arthur C. Clarke
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You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
Arthur C. Clarke
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All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
Arthur C. Clarke
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In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I'm quite fond of the writer who told a beginning author, If you've got a message, use Western Union.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I have never grown up, but I will never stop growing.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Some things have eternal value, and compassion is one of them. I hope we never lose that. Compassion for humans as well as animals.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke