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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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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
Principle
Offers
Creating
Principles
Faith
Guiding
Opportunity
Prophecy
Self
Fulfilling
Great
Optimism

More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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When all else failed, you had to rely on eyeball intrumentation.
Arthur C. Clarke
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A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true.
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Using material ferried up by rockets, it would be possible to construct a space station in ... orbit. The station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by a regular rocket service. (1945)
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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.
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Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.
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
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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 entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The information age has been driven and dominated by technopreneurs. We now have to apply these technologies in saving lives, improving livelihoods and lifting millions of people out of squalor, misery and suffering. In other words, our focus must now move from the geeks to the meek.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence
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...
Arthur C. Clarke
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Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological
Arthur C. Clarke
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The West needs to relearn what the rest of the world has never forgotten - that there is nothing sinful in leisure as long as it does not degenerate into mere sloth.
Arthur C. Clarke
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There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.
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
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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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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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Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future.
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