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I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.

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
Designed
Machine
Machines
Universe
Sometimes
Think
Astronomers
Thinking
Astonishment
Perpetual

More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens.
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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.
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A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.
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It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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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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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The moment when one first meets a great work of art has an impact that can never again be recaptured.
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One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.
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No one of intelligence resents the inevitable.
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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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Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.
Arthur C. Clarke
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He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.
Arthur C. Clarke
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How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.
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.
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I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I think in the long run the money that s been put into the space program is one of the best investments this country has ever made . . .This is a downpayment on the future of mankind. It's as simple as that.
Arthur C. Clarke
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. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
Arthur C. Clarke
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It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings. Alan Bishop
Arthur C. Clarke
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They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence their experiments did not always succeed.
Arthur C. Clarke