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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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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
Whatever
Powers
Universe
Subject
Nature
Fate
Human
Subjects
Humans
Plans
Behinds
Revision
Behind
Preferred
Call
Ruthless

More quotes by 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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Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Why, Robert Singh often wondered, did we give our hearts to friends whose life spans are so much shorter than our own?
Arthur C. Clarke
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Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong it was little consolation that it was always the thirteenth that actually happened.
Arthur C. Clarke
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There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.
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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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.
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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The numbers of distinct human societies or nations, when our race is twice its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the men who have ever lived up to the present time.
Arthur C. Clarke
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One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
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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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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If I didn't exist, I would have invented myself.
Arthur C. Clarke
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What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of view.
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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If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect that he would also understand.
Arthur C. Clarke
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There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in 'Childhood's End.' But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.
Arthur C. Clarke